Fri, 23 Sep 2005

USDA moves to close four Montana processing plants

I don't know the exact specifics in this case, but it seems to be pretty typical of the way that food "safety" inspections are done nationwide, on a state or federal basis. For example ...

A certain creamery with which I'm associated sometimes buys milk from another local farmer when their own herd doesn't produce enough for their needs. This farmer had hung a washing hose up on a rack in his dairy backwards (yes, that's right - it was facing the wrong direction) and was slapped by the state inspectors with a violation.

This happened on a Friday, and the violations consequences trickled to the creamery, since they had a tank full of his milk. They were told that any products they produced from any milk whatsoever, not just the milk from the "unsafe" dairy, after Saturday at midnight could not be labeled "Grade A" (fit for human consumption). Until midnight it was just fine ... but after that it was "unsafe" and potentially deadly!!! Curiously enough, all of the milk from the "infected" farm was used up at the creamery before this insane order was even issued - so their was absolutely no risk to anyone from anything (as if a such a silly infraction produced risk in the first place).

I've come to view "random" and "arbitrary" as synonyms for "regulations" in agriculture.

BILLINGS, Mont. - Montana Cattlemen's Association (MCA) is outraged over the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) targeting of Montana beef processing plants for enforcement actions or suspension of operations.

(link) [The Prairie Star]

/Agriculture | 0 writebacks | permanent link

comment...

 
Notes: If you put a <mailto:> link in the URL field your address will not be mangled: this could be a bad idea as your email address could be easily harvested by bots designed for SPAM. The comments field should now format correctly for line feeds and carriage returns: when you hit the 'Enter' or 'Return' keys in your comment it should break to a new line. The text should wrap cleanly. Please let me know if it doesn't. No HTML tags will pass through - entering links seems to be the main cause of comment SPAM. Also, please be sure that Javascript is enabled in your browser before attempting to post a writeback. Sorry for any inconvenience, but this really helps cut down on the amount of comment SPAM I have to deal with.
 
 Name:
 URL:(optional)
 Title: (optional)
 Comments:  
Save my Name and URL/Email for next time