(From the USDA report on the Hallmark-Westland beef recall.)
The Department of Agriculture issued the largest beef recall in United States history last month after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video showing workers at Hallmark/Westland Meat Company in Chino, Calif., forcing sick cows onto a slaughterhouse kill floor by using forklifts, electric prods and high-pressure water hoses.Follow below the fold to find out which Virginia school districts where shipped recalled beef.There have been no reported illnesses from the meat, and agriculture officials emphasized that the chances of someone becoming sick was slim. The meat was recalled because cows that cannot stand on their own - called "downer cows" - are typically banned from the human food supply because they are more susceptible to certain illnesses, including mad cow disease. - The New York Times
Recalls like these are the consequences of eroded government expertise and competence. The best thing we can do about it is change the people we're sending to Washington, to elect more and better Democrats who care about making the government work for us, not for powerful interests. We need a Democratic President and a strong Congress who will recommit our government to putting the citizens first.
Never again should the government be able to ship bad meat to our kids schools.
(Crossposted from Leesburg Tomorrow.)
But what I cannot forgive is the seemingly endless stream of missteps by the Bush Administration in protecting the citizens,especially while Bush makes a big deal out of believing that his job as President is to protect the citizens.
Our entire modern system makes us utterly dependent on the good faith and competence of others: we depend on strangers to produce, process, and transport our food safely, as well as all the rest of our plentiful "stuff," since we no longer make it all for ourselves on our home farms. We depend on other drivers to obey the traffic lights, and so on. But as individuals we are powerless to force those others to perform properly, or to find and punish them if they cause us harm. For that, we need collective strength as provided by our government.
This need runs counter to the Republican view of "government," which tends toward the idea that all government is bad, and what government exists should be there to protect and enhance the comfort of the elite who provides jobs and goods as a result of their own superior enterprise---- it is the responsibility of every other individual to protect themselves. The YOYO theory, in contrast to the WITT (You're On Your Own versus We're In This Together). Part of YOYO, needless to say, is the elevation of personal profit and aggrandisement as supreme over common good or any long-term benefits to society as a whole.
Thus we get factories moved to China, tax cuts for the wealthy, unfunded mandates for local jurisdictions,inadequate money for inspections, wars for profit overseas, subprime loans and predatory lending, and on and on. And we will continue to get these things under any Republican administration... until such time as the whole system collapses and we are reduced to penury, sucked dry, transformed into a fourth world country.
Food miles: Zero.
But if you hate factory farms (as I do), there's still a good way to get locally produced meat even in suburban areas; hunting deer. Even many built-up areas have urban archery seasons. It's very logical in terms of food economics. With the cow, that's 10 acres that does absolutely nothing else except for making a cow. But when you hunt deer, that converts other land into dual use. You've got backyards that are in residential use, median strips of highways and grass around landing strips at airports that are in transportation use, and parks that are in recreational use. All of which are places where deer graze, making meat out of all that land. It's highly environmentally sound.
Getting off my soap box now...
Goodlatte holds the smoking gun on this one!