To date, 37,000,000 lbs of meat, sold in 36 states, over the course of 2 years, has been recalled।
That's a lot of meat. Meat used in school lunch programs, meat sold in supermarkets. The largest recall in US food history. And I have just one question:
Why?
Of the millions of pounds in circulation (most of which has already been consumed), not one person reported getting sick.
Not one of the thousands of cows that entered the slaughterhouse was ever diagnosed with an illness that is transmissable to human beings through consumption.
So why the hysteria and recall?
Nasty videotapes. Videos that upset us, because cows were shown to be lame, or being dragged or pushed with forklifts. For anyone with a heart for animals, the tape was upsetting.
But that doesnt mean that the public is at danger.
Every serious economist knows that Perfection is not an option in any endeavor. In huge corn silos, an occasional mouse will turn up and ground up along with the corn. In fields of broccoli, an occasional worm might get ground up with the veggies before being thrown into the frozen food aisle. That is the reality of life; and while it might make us squeamish, it is not a legitimate reason for society to incur enormous costs in an effort to 'make the icky go away.'
Even if the video showed 100 lame cows, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of meat processed at that plant over the years. Even if the cows were diseased (as opposed to lame), there is no evidence that they carried diseases that could be contracted by humans. And two years after the incident, no one has reported any outbreak of illness attributable to this plant or lot of meat.
Slaughterhouses are not pleasant places. They smell awful, and are pits of blood and hair and warm organ smells...and generally pretty sickening places to the uninitiated. But our revulsion at them should not be the basis of sound decision-making.
The costs of this recall are astronomical, and widespread: the meat company is not the only one incurring those costs. Retail outlets and wholesalers must scour their product and pull them from the shelves. Schools must do the same. And as the stock of meat decreases, you an expect all consumers to end up paying more for meat becasue of the constricted supply.
And the benefit of all this?
Well, you can't say that the benefit of the action is to prevent human sickness...since there wasn't any human sickness, or even a likelihood of it, to begin with.
The only benefit is that we get to assuage our consciences at brutal slaughterhouse practices. We get to 'make the icky go away..'
Politicians will beat their breasts and call for stronger government regulation and inspections, and we will once again hand over power to the federal government to Make Things Right.
And once again, we will value Style and Symbol over substance.
That's a lot of meat. Meat used in school lunch programs, meat sold in supermarkets. The largest recall in US food history. And I have just one question:
Why?
Of the millions of pounds in circulation (most of which has already been consumed), not one person reported getting sick.
Not one of the thousands of cows that entered the slaughterhouse was ever diagnosed with an illness that is transmissable to human beings through consumption.
So why the hysteria and recall?
Nasty videotapes. Videos that upset us, because cows were shown to be lame, or being dragged or pushed with forklifts. For anyone with a heart for animals, the tape was upsetting.
But that doesnt mean that the public is at danger.
Every serious economist knows that Perfection is not an option in any endeavor. In huge corn silos, an occasional mouse will turn up and ground up along with the corn. In fields of broccoli, an occasional worm might get ground up with the veggies before being thrown into the frozen food aisle. That is the reality of life; and while it might make us squeamish, it is not a legitimate reason for society to incur enormous costs in an effort to 'make the icky go away.'
Even if the video showed 100 lame cows, that is a drop in the bucket compared to the volume of meat processed at that plant over the years. Even if the cows were diseased (as opposed to lame), there is no evidence that they carried diseases that could be contracted by humans. And two years after the incident, no one has reported any outbreak of illness attributable to this plant or lot of meat.
Slaughterhouses are not pleasant places. They smell awful, and are pits of blood and hair and warm organ smells...and generally pretty sickening places to the uninitiated. But our revulsion at them should not be the basis of sound decision-making.
The costs of this recall are astronomical, and widespread: the meat company is not the only one incurring those costs. Retail outlets and wholesalers must scour their product and pull them from the shelves. Schools must do the same. And as the stock of meat decreases, you an expect all consumers to end up paying more for meat becasue of the constricted supply.
And the benefit of all this?
Well, you can't say that the benefit of the action is to prevent human sickness...since there wasn't any human sickness, or even a likelihood of it, to begin with.
The only benefit is that we get to assuage our consciences at brutal slaughterhouse practices. We get to 'make the icky go away..'
Politicians will beat their breasts and call for stronger government regulation and inspections, and we will once again hand over power to the federal government to Make Things Right.
And once again, we will value Style and Symbol over substance.
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8 comments:
Actually - some of those cows could have been diseased with mad cow disease. The tests that they said turned out negative are the ones that were done before slaughtering them.
However, there is no way to diagnose mad cow disease on a living animal. They have to test for proteins in the brain. So, there is the possibility that some of those animals actually did have mad cow disease. Thus, the recall is completely justified.
Truth is that there is mad cow disease in North America, but there is no testing...
AH, gl, but the problem there is that your line of reasoning can only logically lead to the conclusion that ALL beef should be banned...not just Westmaks....
Well, except for those 76,000 people who die of foodborne illness every year. Every. Single. Year.
Go here if you want to see some really fun photos of dead children!
http://www.safetables.org/
(ah, but who gives a darn about them, right? Just kids! More fun to hold firm to our opinions!)
I wrote that wrong. It's 5000 dead, 76,000,000 illnesses. That's what I get for multitasking.
(I may be passionate, but I can admit when I'm wrong).
Okay, and I also realized how horrible that first comment sounded. But this whole thing gets me crazy fired up. E. Coli literally kills, and it kills the weakest and most vulnerable among us. One of the big reasons why downer cows shouldn't be allowed into the food supply is because the risks of e. Coli getting into beef are much, much higher with downers.
For me, it's got nothing whatsoever to do with animal rights, and everything to do with the safety of our food. Which absolutely is compromised by these practices.
The USDA is at fault as much as Westland - they had an inspector onsite, and they let this go by until the Humane Society caught it on video and they were caught with their proverbial pants down. A different, but appropriate, rant might be the money wasted by the USDA inspectors who did nothing until this, and now we have to pay for their cleanup, too. But that's a different rant - I still maintain that this recall needed to happen.
gl is right about mad cow, too. You want to talk liberty? Check out the story of Creekstone Farms wanting to test its own beef, at its own expense, and the government not allowing it. Literally - the government is not letting a private company test its own product at its own expense. Nuts. And infuriating.
But I'm going to stop commenting now, lest you think I'm one of those crazy trolls. I'm not. Well, maybe only a little. I just stumbled across this post and saw you say no one got sick, and it made my blood pressure jump through the roof. Because people do get sick. They get sick all the time - from contaminated beef from places just like this.
Signing off now.
Actually Tully, what I said does not bring to the conclusion you suggest at all. There is a very simple solution, which is what they do in Europe and is what got rid of mad cow disease. They test every single slaughtered animal. It adds $30 in the cost of the whole animal (which is nothing because the meat in one single animal is worth way more than that). in North america they tried to say that the cattle farmers can't afford that, but it's all BS. They pass down the cost to consumers anyway.
The fact is that it's time to get rid of farmers who feed cattle crap (literally) and have responsible people who raise animals according to some minimal standard - not only based on how much profit they make.
Sorry GL, but your analyais is emotional and highly flawed. 45,000,000 cattle are slaughtered for food each year in the United States. We're not talking about big agribusiness either: the 50 largest beef producers in the US produce less than 2% of that total.
Here's where I disagree with your analysis:
1. I doubt the cost would only be $30/head for testing. Testing would require government monitoring as well, including paperwork, administration, pensions and health care for bureaucrats, office space - this $30 would be much higher.
2. Even if we assume your $30/ head is correct, that would be ONE BILLION, three hundred fifty million dollars of costs added on to meat production. Not a small amount.
3. Beef producres could NOT just 'pass this along' to customers. Agricultural products are highly 'elastic' products, which means that consumers are super sensitive to price changes. They readily switch to cheaper products when prices rise (this is why agricultural products are not taxed in any jurisdiction in the US. Inelastic products such as alcohol, gasoline, and cigarettes are taxed because consumers continue to buy them in significant quantities). That means that farmers would not just lose $20 per head, but perhaps 10% of their sales as well, as consumers switch to chicken or pork or turkey to avoid the higher beef prices. In this case, the loss to the industry is not One billion three hundred fifty million, but a staggering sum as 4.5 million fewer beef (at hundreds of pounds per critter) are purchased.
4) Point to a case of an American contracting Mad Cow. You can't.
5) Point to cases where government bureaucrats have destroyed the livelihoods of people through slaughtering their flocks: England is a prime example. So is the confiscation of a flock of sheep in Vermont several years ago for a non-existent problem.
If you dont like corporate food processes, dont buy it. Buy from a local farmer you trust.
But dont force 282 million american consumers to pay higher prices for beef, and destroy small family farms at the same time, when there is no evidence that we will be any safer whatsoever. The cost exceeds the benefits many times over.
Doing some research into this producer and happened to spot your blog.
I've seen these videos, so have you most likely. Is there anything in your heart that would allow you to abide by an animal or fellow human being to be brutalized as these helpless animals were. Perhaps the thought of a knife cutting through a hide battered and stabbed (entries for bacteria from the manure, urine and bacterial growth from the yards) doesn't send chills through your spine. It does mine. And add to that the idea that any of the meat from one of those unfortunate creatures was being fed to my child as part of his/her spaghetti at school lunch or an aged family member as part of their home delivery of hot lunch programs. You can run all the figures you want to about this and that. The fact is those handling meat production had better educate themselves on how to handle animals ending up on our dinner tables. I can't imagine the damage being caused by ingesting meat of an animal in terror and sick as it died. This issue surpasses the business angle.
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