Are food recalls timed to be useless?, page 1

There have been an escalating number of food recalls in the news of late.

Here's an example:

www.newsday.com...

WASHINGTON - The recent recall of beef from a California slaughter plant was a communications nightmare because information often reached parents and the media before school food service directors, a group representing them told members of Congress yesterday.

"In an era of instant news and e-mail, when any USDA agency puts out a press release saying the product 'is unfit for human consumption,' the information reaches parents immediately," Mary Hill, president of the School Nutrition Association, testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Education and Labor Committee. "Parents start calling before we have any information."

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

But it seems like when they finally get around to doing a recall, the food has already been eaten anyway. The same in the case I cited above.

www.flatbushlife.com...

Brooklyn public school students consumed beef the federal government deemed “unfit for human food.”

Prior to learning that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) was to recall 143 million pounds of meat because sick cows were slaughtered, the city Department of Education (DOE) served the beef in school lunches.

“Some of the beef was used,” explained DOE spokesperson Margie Feinberg.

Concerns have been raised about the quality of the meat because sick cows, called downers, can carry illnesses and bacteria.

Please visit the link provided for the complete story.

I wonder if the slow response to these things is because they don't really want to do recalls, even if the food is unfit for human consumption, so they don't unless they're forced to by public outcry. In other words, they operate on "what you don't know won't hurt you", when obviously, in the case of food, it can.

Even in the cases where E. Coli is involved and people are dying, it seems the recall happens after the tainted food has hit the shelves and been consumed by an awful lot of people.

It makes me wonder if this is something similar to Bush's gagging of scientists, but in this case it's preventing food safety action unless it becomes a political tsunami.

What's your take? Is it deliberately slow, or it just turns out that way?

Sometimes I wonder what's in our food that we DON'T hear about.

This certainly isn't the fist time it turned out that way. I remember the pet food scandal that killed a bunch of pets, and they didn't catch that before we ate pigs and chickens who were exposed, either.