A pandering PR stunt by an overgrown bureaucracy. (The USDA is the home of the rabbit inspectors, bravely protecting our children from risky pet bunnies.)
So the USDA is largely responsible for our having some of the safest food on the planet. I mean you can mock it all you want, but if USDA meat inspectors aren't there to watch over the production; you might want to consider becoming a lot more vegetarian for a while. I mean, unless you really like eating cows infected with MRSA or Mutton with a side of scrapie...
Seriously, if meat inspection goes by the wayside for any length of time; people will die, because it won't be anybody's job to make sure the meat is safe and the folks who run meat-packing plants don't like that they can't wring every last bit of profit out of every animal they buy.
Can I get a citation for any of this? It was my understanding that the USDA allows cattle to be fed "cage lining" which is chicken feathers, poop and feed taken from the bottom of chicken cages. The chicken feed, in turn, contains cattle meat and trimmings, thus making your "side of scrapie" scenario a small but significant possibility.
In other words, what makes you think the USDA is not beholden to the commercial interests that it regulates, like every other government agency?
Look at the difference in Salmonella rates between the US and France for instance.
And yes, regulatory capture is an issue with the FDA, that has periodically resulted in scandals; but the meatpacking industry knows that without some obvious checks on their hygiene their industry as a whole is worse off. If one plant cuts too many corners and starts shipping moldy meat, the entire industries sales suffer; so it's in the meat companies interest to have someone policing defectors from good practices.
THAT IS THE POINT. We need them for food safety, but they blew their budget harrassing children and illusionists about bunnies. Now they are threatening to feed us diseased cows so the bunny police can get their paychecks back.
I repeat, it is a pandering PR stunt by an overgrown bureaucracy.
> they blew their budget harrassing children and illusionists about bunnies
Blew their entire $155 billion budget on bunny inspections, did they? How many of their 100,000+ staff are bunny inspectors? All of them? Or just 90%? What a load of nonsense.
Your hysterical "talking point" style comments add nothing but noise.
This is a very rich and high-quality dataset. I started using it to learn data visualization a few years ago and have been tinkering with it in parallel coordinates ever since.
