MORE FROM HUFFPOST
MORE FROM HUFFPOST
fsis
The USDA is happy to hand over much of its verification authority, then turn a blind eye to the abuse that inevitably continues when they're not watching.
Chinese-processed chicken can easily appear on school lunch trays, despite the USDA's initial statement to the contrary. That means we may be exposing an especially vulnerable population -- children -- to potential food safety risks.
That's right: The agency charged with enforcing the Humane Slaughter Act refuses to enforce it for more than 98 percent of slaughtered animals.
A Northern California company is recalling more than 8.7 million pounds of beef products because it processed diseased and unhealthy animals without a full federal inspection, federal officials said Saturday.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
WHAT'S HAPPENING
American public institutions have a long track record of keeping our food disease-free. Yet as this service is increasingly outsourced to for-profit corporations, it is leading to repeated oversight failures that have caused illness and even death.
Humane handling has increasingly become an important issue to the American public, and rightly so. The discerning public demands that the animals that go into those packages on our shelves are treated humanely before giving their lives to our service.
CDC investigators are a vital link in the chain of public protection because they are the people who "trace back" illness to its source. Obviously, knowing someone has salmonella poisoning is not enough: we also need to know which food from what company gave them the disease.
There's a real dispute about the safety of pink slime, but not so of chicken. If we has a nation became alarmed in proper proportion to things that are concerning, however, white slime would be a much bigger concern than pink slime.
