Bad Beef Stopped - but I'm Not Happy

I should call this a success of the system at work. The US Dept of Agriculture ordered the recall of 143 million pounds of beef.

Why? Because the cows being slaughtered were so sick they couldn't even walk. These cows were in such bad shape, that they had to be lifted by fork lift at times into the food process. These cows that were so disease ridden or malnourished that they couldn't even stand up were cut up, ground up, and shipped out for people to eat - mainly to schools.

Oh, we're not suppose to worry about it - everybody's "pretty sure" it was safe. Hey, the system worked, right!

No. It didn't.

How did this information come out? Because animal rights group did their own undercover investigation and found the evidence.

Wait - a citizen's group? Hey, kudos to them. If they hadn't done this, nobody would have known.

But where the hell was the Dept of Agriculture? Where were their agents taking in information and saying "Hey, we need to check these people out?" Where's the arrests from serving tainted meat - and I don't mean just the employees, but at the top? Yes, I'm calling that the CEO of Hallmark Meat Packing Co be arrested - and don't give me this bullshit of "Oh, I didn't know what was going on!". It's your company - *you* are responsible for that goes on, especially when it's pretty evident that there was a systematic lack of control to the point that 143 million pounds had to be called back in.

The system failed us. Maybe it's because Bush put in people like Michael Brown or Nancy Nord of the Consumer Safety Commission (you know, the lady who told Congress that she didn't need any more staff, after her staff had been cut in half since 2000 and had so many toys to test for safety that the room for testing had no space for more items, all of this while toys with lead and unsafe parts were being sold around the country?).

Whatever it is, there's a division in government that isn't doing its job. How do we know that other meat or food places - pork, poultry, or otherwise - aren't also having problems?

Evidently, the Dept of Agriculture wouldn't know - unless somebody did their job for them.

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