USDA says trust us on meat

The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to limit meat recall information except when it determines there is a serious health risk.

There are so many things wrong with this.

First is that it would let USDA protect big slaughterhouses by making its own determination of what a level of health risk actually is.

Second, this could be just a step away from USDA shielding those slaughterhouses from liability suits.

Third, it lets the USDA hide itself from criticism as to how badly it may be doing at various steps of its meat inspection process. In other words, if it’s missing a lot of stuff at the slaughterhouse level, and it is allowed to limit its recall information to not tell what stores are selling bad meat, it comes off smelling like a relative rose.

As for recent past history, here’s where the rubber would hit the road:

Had that been the rule in place last month, consumers would not have been told if their supermarkets sold meat from a Southern California slaughterhouse that triggered the biggest beef recall in U.S. history.

The story notes that currently, USDA only discloses a recall itself, not where the meat was sold.

Partly for competitive reasons, industry groups support the way recalls are currently done, where a description of the recalled product is released by the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service along with some other information including where it was produced.

Retailers must remove recalled meat from their shelves but there’s no requirement that they notify their customers about meat already sold, though some take voluntary steps to do so.

But, packaged hamburger, other than a story label, doesn’t have a brand name like Del Monte or whatever. It’s hard for buyers to know if their meat is bad or not.

USDA is now trying to spell its name as CYA.

Update, added from comments by me:
I beg to differ.

First, yes, it's clear it’s a proposed rule change.

BUT, the purpose of blogs, activists, etc., is to ALERT people to proposed rule changes, before the horses are out of the barn.

I think the meatpacking industry “concern” there is disingenuous.

Second, and to correct what I originally posted and in comments, yes, I did say this would let them not tell how many pounds of meat are recalled. However, that is not to say that isn’t coming down the pike. As it is, with minimal inspection, I would not trust current USDA numbers on the pounds of meat it does list in a recall.

The “secrecy” factor is, IMO, a de facto idea that USDA would be deciding what an imminent health risk is, or not.
Why?

Without knowing all the retail stores bad meat went to, we have no way of knowing how many people got sick on the bad meat.

Of course, the “secrecy” factor is par for the course on BushCo.


As for what additional information the public will get, I’m all ears, if you want to post that info, and a link, here.