Not surprising, you say? Kind of like, uhm, common sense, perhaps?
Well, here in the United States of America, it is NOT illegal to sell food contaminated with salmonella, or even E. coli.
Armies of lobbyists have been working diligently for decades to dismantle the food safety laws put into effect back in the day when there was a strong consumer protection movement.
The FDA and USDA no longer have the laws, the budget or the mandate to protect America's citizens. It's all about deregulation and enabling greater profits for Corporate Food, now.
Meanwhile, America has fallen to almost 40th among the world's nations, for population longevity and health.
Our “standard American diet” is now so bad, that people having children today are likely to outlive those children.
That's right – young parents giving birth to babies today are, for the first time, likely to outlive their own children. That's how severe the decline of our nutrition has been in just twenty years, and that's how dramatically nutrition affects the very young.
If you were born 20-30 years ago, the nutrition you received in your first five years was that much better, making your life expectancy much longer than babies born today, in the USA.
Giant food processing companies selling to Americans do not need to manufacture food to the same high safety standard as, say, a company selling goods in Denmark. This is a triumph for Corporate Food. And a tragedy for the thousands of Americans who sicken and die from eating the contaminated results.
In the world of Corporate Food, thousands stricken by totally preventable food-borne illnesses are just numbers to crunch during profit calculations.
American CEOs are tough enough to handle the truth: If you want to see those profit dividends stay high, a certain percentage of your customer base is gonna die (collateral damage).
The reason a company recalls contaminated ground turkey is not because they have to, but because their number-wonks have determined that the potential costs of litigation and damages, and the negative publicity, might outweigh other factors, thereby justifying the cost of recall.
The cost of increasing manufacturing quality to the same high degree that consumers enjoy in Europe might negatively impact the seven-figure salaries and hundred-million-dollar bonuses that so many American CEOs have become accustomed to.
Most importantly, there is no need to squander money like that. Because, here in the USA, there's no law against selling food contaminated with toxic bacteria.
Remember this the next time your family sits down to supper and says grace: “Thank God we live in a country that puts corporate profits ahead of all other considerations. Amen!”
Deb Baumann lives in Upper Lake, Calif.
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