Staph seen in 1/2f of U.S. meat: GOP moves to defund FDA

[Kulindahr]

This is the silliest response I have read in a long time, (and a bit condescending too).

Sorry for being condescending. I was going to edit to change some things as I have had second thoughts about what I wrote... but it was too late.

My apologies.

I apologize to everyone. I need to relax a bit.

No prob -- this is CE & P, after all.

The big point is that it's precisely because they want a profit that private sector regulators can be trusted to do a very good job indeed.

 

[Kulindahr]

"We could set up a system where food was probably a lot cheaper than it is now if we just eliminated meat inspectors"

- Obama

See even Obama is against you BP and hates the FDA.

I think that's out of context. If it's from the speech/talk I think it's from, he was being sarcastic, trashing on the Republicans.

What the Republicans in the House want isn't liberty, it's chaos. They have this warped notion that by burning down the bramble patch, you automatically get a blueberry farm. Somehow they totally overlook the fact that someone still has to build up the soil, plant the blueberry bushes and nurture them at least five years before they bear any fruit at all.

And many libertarians brainlessly follow that fantasy. They could use a little wisdom, and a lot less ideology. They need to face the real world, where there are indeed areas where the private sector, at least at the moment, shows no capacity for taking care of keeping quality high. An obvious one is air quality: there is no way that air quality on a national scale can be handled without a nation-wide agency. There's no way it can be done with multiple competing agencies; how do you maintain air quality when you have multiple competing standards? and when the air masses move from one company's territory to another's? I suppose someone like Nobel laureate Friedman might come up with a scheme, but I'm doubtful. Getting the idea of chemical trespass into the law would be a big step toward it, but there's a long way to go before I'd even tentatively consider it sane to transfer air quality authority to the private sector.

 

[SteveyBoyLA]

To quote the mission statement of the FDA: FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.

The primary vision and mission statements of private industry is to protect, defend and expand profitability and shareholder value, not protecting public health. Yes, most responsible companies do a good job in providing safe foods and products. Those who don't generally have taken a hit to their brand, and have lost profits or incurred fines when taking cheap shortcuts or not providing responsible quality control measures.

There are too many examples of a few bad apples in the private industry to surrender your trust that they will abide by responsible public health measures, or that competition will cull the bad actors out of business. There is too much at risk to public heath without the FDA's oversight whose only mission is to defend public health and product safety.

 

[Kulindahr]

Giancarlo, you contradict yourself right and left -- and show a serious ignorance about the subject.

One example of contradiction is you can't make up your mind about who private companies are responsible to -- their shareholders or themselves.

And you don't seem to get that when a company's existence depends on regulating others thoroughly, they do a better job than any government. They were doing it before government got into it, and they are still doing it, except now with the government interfering and making things less efficient.

Nor do you understand what happens when a big company sues a big company when there's been an insurance payout: the insurance companies will marshal more lawyers with more perseverance, because their existence depends on winning those suits. BP and other huge corporations can just decide to make a settlement, and go on; the insurance companies don't quit until they get a settlement -- something I happen to know because an insurance company got in on my side of an issue that involved about $2000; they spent easily five times that getting the money from the party responsible for the damage: they don't quit.

UL is even more powerful: if a company they're certifying products for screws with them, they just send out a bulletin to the entire industry that that company's products are all now delisted as certified. That fast, the company will be selling nothing.

And elected officials are irrelevant; they're bit players generally owned by the corporations anyway. The important people are the bureaucrats, who never get fired; they might get moved to another job, but more often they get promoted into a different department. Elected officials are only going to do something more than speeches or bills designed to die in committee if the existence of the corporations writing their PAC checks is actually threatened -- and maybe not then.

UL has never created any messes -- no private regulatory company has. You can get the corruption out of them, because it's hard to get it in there in the first place: no one is going to work at such a place who isn't interested first and foremost about making sure that the products they certify are safe. They tend to get people like the EPA does, people who hate industry, only more so. Government requires only spot inspection of products; private regulatory companies tend to require a minimum of 20% inspection, and have been tending toward the Japanese model: 100% inspection, meaning every single component of every single product has to be inspected, and the records kept, by the companies they inspect products for. They're like the folks at Consumer Reports (which has slacked off in the last twenty years, though): they WANT to find something wrong with the company's product. Government bureaucrats, when they aren't actually there to look out for the companies' interests, only care about doing enough to qualify for their next raise.

The fact remains that the best consumer safety activities this country has ever had have been from the private sector. They're the ones the government had to go to to learn the business. They're still the ones doing the best job, ever demanding that companies get it not just right, but better. That's how their companies grow and prosper: they keep the manufacturers honest.

 

[Kulindahr]

My point is I simply don't trust them the same as you do, and I view the private sector with great suspicion, and think they are guilty of some of the most significant corruption in society today.

I trust that people whose livelihoods and prosperity depend on being as hard as they can on the companies whose products inspect will be as ruthless at making sure those products aren't just safe but are getting constantly better as outfits like Haliburton will be at cutting corners at every opportunity and crossing their fingers that they don't get caught. And I trust that such companies will continue to attract people who sincerely lust after catching a company screwing up -- especially when they get bonuses for catching someone screwing up.

The same thing that drives BP and their ilk to try to get away with crap drives private regulatory companies to catch them at it. They say to set a thief to catch a thief; it works the same here: set a company to catch a company.


Another point is that the companies being inspected will have contracts with the companies doing the inspecting, so if they try to put one over on the inspectors, it's breach of contract. Know what happens to a company convicted for breach of contract? If they survive the blow to their stock, they have a rough time recovering from all their customers who will cancel their contracts because it's been shown they can't be trusted.

 

[Kulindahr]

To quote the mission statement of the FDA: FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation.

The primary vision and mission statements of private industry is to protect, defend and expand profitability and shareholder value, not protecting public health. Yes, most responsible companies do a good job in providing safe foods and products. Those who don't generally have taken a hit to their brand, and have lost profits or incurred fines when taking cheap shortcuts or not providing responsible quality control measures.

There are too many examples of a few bad apples in the private industry to surrender your trust that they will abide by responsible public health measures, or that competition will cull the bad actors out of business. There is too much at risk to public heath without the FDA's oversight whose only mission is to defend public health and product safety.

The FDA's mission, as is true of all bureaucracies, is to increase the size of their turf, justify larger budgets, and keep their jobs secure. What their mission statement is, is irrelevant.

To get results, you set someone on the task who will be paid according to how well he gets results. The only government involvement that might be useful would be to audit the regulatory companies. But since their growth and prosperity depend on catching any screw-up the manufacturers do, that would be a boring job.


I've seen the result of government regulation: ruined environment, dead fish floating in rivers, lakes not safe to swim in, entire forests dead from pests, and more -- and that's just here locally. The result I've seen of private regulation is superb products you know you can trust your life to, because the company certifying them has never made a mistake.

 

[JB3]

I do not contradict myself anywhere.

The private companies are only concerned with profit. I don't see what's so difficult for you to understand. And now you're insulting me. That just shows how dodgy your entire argument is.

If you can't talk without insulting people, then I will have nothing else to say to you.

It's a wonder... you can't even directly reply to my post... and when you do it's in bits and pieces. And what serious ignorance? This is what I study, pal. If anyone is showing ignorance its you. It appears your knowledge on this subject is SERIOUSLY LACKING. And then you have this kind of naive attitude thinking "oh big business knows what is best for us... let them take care of it"... yeah right. Maybe you need a wake-up call.



What a pile of idealistic nonsense. The biggest consumer safety advocate in this country were public leaders, one being Ralph Nader. The private sector has a terrible record. Why should I trust them to do anything good? You just make assumptions, and then you lie about the reasons why.

The private sector has a very poor track record. Why should I ever trust the people who destroy the environment and this country? Shame on them.

I take my apology back. Don't even know why I bothered when you call me ignorant. You don't even know me.

You think Ralph Nader actually cared for public safety? Good God child, your hopeless.

 

[SteveyBoyLA]

The only government involvement that might be useful would be to audit the regulatory companies.

I think you have a good point here. Privatizing some elements of commerce oversight does have tax-saving merits as long as there is no provision to 'opt out' from third party regulations that will ensure public safety. No question that the feds are not very cost effective with our tax $s e.g., bloated military budget for one, and can go too far in protecting the environment (the bark beetle proliferation is a good example by not allowing for the culling of trees). I do agree that the FDA's role could be limited to auditing the regulatory process. So there, I compromised with you!

 

[Kulindahr]

Giancarlo, I'm not addressing your posts in detail because I don't want to make these things long-winded. I'm addressing the main points.

"Ignorant" is not an insult, it's a statement of fact: you don't know what you're talking about. You show it very nicely by calling Nader a "public official", and referring to government regulators as "elected". Nader has never been a public official of any kind, and there has never been an elected government regulator in this country.

And you're either intentionally ignorant or just unable to read what I'm saying. Companies do well what gets them profits -- and that's exactly why private regulators work: their profit depends on making the companies they inspect get it right.

Although UL isn't for-profit, and they outdo the government anyway.

You say you study this. Tell me, then: how many construction sites have you been on how many contractors have you worked with, how much plumbing and electrical and carpentry have you done? DO a thousand hours or more spread across those, and you'll have studied the issue, because that's where you'll find that they people who depend on things being good trust UL to guarantee a product's quality and safety, and laugh at government regulation as a joke. Oh, here and there you'll find a government inspector actually interested in making sure people end up with good materials, homes, plumbing, whatever, but mostly they're about filling in blanks and drawing a paycheck. That's why we get roads that fail, bridges with rust and metal fatigue cracks just painted over, entire housing developments that have so many corners cut they would roll.

Why do the people who depend on quality trust UL? Because with UL, everyone takes direct responsibility for their actions. When a product is certified, the paper trail shows who did the testing, who signed off on it, who his supervisor was, all the way to the top. If something is fishy, everyone who signed off on it is called on the carpet. When a government regulator signs off on something, he isn't liable for a bloody thing, and his job isn't in danger.

This is the reality. I've seen it on construction sites, with water quality, with other things. The testing that can be trusted is done by private companies, not by the government. And when the EPA signs off on dumping heavy metals into clean rivers, and their regulations let invasive species crowd out the native ones, when you can drive fifty miles through forests of dead trees caused by government regulation, it's plain where good regulations comes from -- and it isn't from bureaucrats.

 

[Kulindahr]

The idea that regulation existed before major government regulation is hogwash. If it was up to you, we wouldn't have minimum wages, no environmental standards or anything.

Thanks for proving my case: two falsehoods in a row.

Strong opinions are one thing. But when you blatantly lie about the reality that's an entirely different matter. Libertarians really don't make any sense.

Yes -- you should stop lieing about the reality. Tell me how many thousands of hours of employment in occupations that depend on the reliability of products; if it's at least 2k, I might believe you have a clue. And if you can tell me the history of Underwriters Laboratories without having to look them up, it might give you some credibility.

And I see why you won't look at the truth and insist on ignoring what I've said: you have an ideological axe to grind.

If you had any awareness at all, you'd know that a large portion of libertarians favor stronger environmental standards. Do you know what "chemical trespass" is? We're just aware of some facts, like that the best cared-for open lands in the country are private, and the worst cared-for are federal.

I've been on both sides of this. I have yet to see an inspector or tester for a private outfit be anything but viciously honest, trying every trick in the book, and some that aren't, to seek out flaws. I've seen dozens of government inspectors glance and things and give a check-off, and very few who actually examine what they're inspecting. Private entities doing inspecting are tough and obnoxiously intrusive; government ones are predictable and easy to satisfy.

You've got your theory down nicely. But you know little to nothing about the real world.

 

[Kulindahr]

Then stop being hypocritical. Government officials are elected, government regulators can be replaced by those public officials. I'll stand corrected on Nader.. he's a public political activist.

Ivory-tower syndrome. In reality, lazy, cheating, corrupt bureaucrats don't get replaced. Lazy, cheating, corrupt elected officials don't get replaced that often!

Nothing you post makes any sense though. You seem to grab onto strawman arguments in an attempt to give yourself credibility. The government is the one that came up with a great deal of regulation.

Yes, the government did -- and if you'd been paying attention, you'd have read where I said that's its job -- but once it's been shown how to do that regulation, turn it over the the private sector. Private outfits were doing regulation before government did; they just started in the easiest areas

You're the one who needs to study this issue, and stop being ignorant and pompous. You don't know everything. Government regulation is necessary. Much of the standards you see today, whether they be product safety or environmental standards are because of government regulations. The public activist, Ralph Nader, was responsible for many of them... along with others.

Some government regulation is necessary -- most of it helps keep people poor, and screws with the economy, driving jobs overseas.

But there are places government regulation will probably always be necessary. I gave the example of air quality: it's either government or a monopoly. Private outfits like UL are superbly effective partly because someone else could get into the game. Air isn't manufactured, so there's no way to do point-of-manufacture inspection. Separate companies would almost inevitably mean separate standards, unless government set the standards and let private companies enforce them, but that would just be contracting out a government function, which really isn't private.

Actually it can be in danger, as people would put pressure on public officials to remove or change officials within the government.

Naive idealism. It doesn't happen. If it does, it takes forever -- there was a corrupt driving examiner here, everyone knew it, and even then it took a group of citizens over half a dozen years and as many lawsuits filed before elected official even decided they should look into it -- and meanwhile kids got failed on their tests when they made no mistakes, others got lower scores than they'd earned, and people ended up paying more for insurance as a result. There are other corrupt officials here that even the County Commissioners admit they can't touch -- there's too much money and influence involved. For what it would cost to get rid of one of them -- it would end up in federal court -- the county doesn't have the money for that kind of process.

Besides which, complainers tend to get arrested for things that never happened, and the cops who do it never get touched -- there's no penalty at all for arresting someone and losing in court.

No it's your own perception which isn't to be trusted. And I've said before, government regulation needs strengthening by several fold. The private sector are a bunch of crooks. This is the reality and something I have noticed since 2008 to a great degree. They'll choose their own pocketbooks over the safety and rights of the consumer.

You've really bought into the propaganda. And you're not paying attention: private regulators make their money by looking out for the consumer. That's how UL was built, and several others; it's how Consumer Reports prospers. Choosing their pocketbooks means fighting for the safety and rights of the consumer, for them.

You keep looking at it as self-regulation. Frak, I don't even trust the kid down the street to mow the lawn correctly; that's how much I trust self-regulation. I'm counting on the way private regulatory companies actually work: adversarial regulation -- their profit depends on making sure the companies they're monitoring are spotless, or if not that they hit them hard. And a breach of contract suit is a lot scarier to most companies than any $250k fine.

I'm not lying about anything. It's just you who doesn't have a clue about anything about you're talking about. You're just walking blind and talking blind.

You lied about several things, including my position. It's what happens often when you don't pay attention and start making things up.

This is totally bogus. The large portion of libertarians favor little to no environmental standards

How many LP conventions have you been to? How many local or regional party meetings?
I've sat in a good number of arguments with libertarian activists that focus on how to stick the big companies with actual responsibility for their actions -- a recent one was trying to get the national party to push for a class-action lawsuit against BO, demanding $500 billion be put in a trust for paying out damages to everyone who lived along the affected coast or whose livelihood was in any way connected to the Gulf. We also discussed how there should be at least three private companies, and the oil people would have to sign with at least one for total inspection of their rigs, and a company not signed would have the authority to conduct their own inspections anyway if they suspected anything wasn't on the level with the oil company and its inspectors.

And libertarians keep fighting for the concept of chemical trespass, which would mean if a company's chemicals leaked onto my property, the individual responsible could be arrested and held until the matter was cleared up -- or on a lesser approach, sued, personally.

Most libertarians I've ever met love environmental standards, and hold to high ones. They just don't want clueless bureaucrats making up regulations that end up with the huge side effect of employing thousands of lawyers arguing for waivers where the regulations make no sense at all (like the national regulations concerning wetlands, which were promulgated with no scientific input and with no difference in definition between an Arizona plateau or a Pacific NW floodplain, a definition which makes half the back yards in this town wetlands).

, and put their trust in the private sector... even though the private sector has been guilty of most of the abuses. I want extremely restrictive government standards. And I think the standards in this country set by the government are woefully inadequate. But I'll point to other countries, and say that is the regulation this country needs.

Private regulation is a joke.

You haven't even looked at private sector regulation -- all you're envisioning is self-regulation. That's beyond a joke; it's like spraying bare wood on a house with vinegar and expecting termites not to move in. The abuses you refer to haven't been by private regulators, but by private companies in need of regulation.

There's one standard the government has that's totally inadequate, that's relevant these days: the concept of "too big to fail". The common sense move (which was the original intent of the phrase) is that if something's too big to fail, you do with it like you would a tree too dangerous to leave standing by your house: chop it down and turn it into piece that won't hurt if they fail.

And you do? Because all you have demonstrated is how arrogant and ignorant you really are. I know a lot more about the real world then you do. Want to know why? I'm a leftist, you're a libertarian. That says it all. Libertarians are absolutely clueless about reality.

Libertarians don't use facts in their arguments, only emotion and irrelevance.

LOL

Leftists have the notion, which you display wonderfully, that the world works the way the words on paper say it works. In reality, elected officials tend to be owned by giant corporations, and won't bother to deal with any malfeasance by hired officials unless some massive special interest that can threaten their re-election gets involved.

Read around this forum -- I use lots of facts, and get called a false libertarian because I pay attention to them. So far you've used political theory and ivory-tower naivete. The fact is that government regulatory agencies harm and even kill people and get away with it, where a private regulator can't.

 

[CowboyBob]

This is great news for Republicans in 10 easy steps.

1 ) Republicans defund the FDA, no one to inspect meat.
2 ) More tainted meat slips through to poor consumers.
3 ) Poor consumers eat tainted meat, get sick.
4 ) Republicans successfully eradicate Medicare and Medicaid so poor and disabled can't receive treatment.
5 ) Poor and disabled die, less drain on federal budget.
6 ) Tax rates lowered for the wealthiest because fewer parasitic poor people.
7 ) Freedom of religion banned, except for Christian religion. Schools defunded and closed.
8 ) With most jobs shipped overseas, surviving poor become enslaved by wealthy as Republicans do away with minimum wage.
9 ) Republican majority outlaws all political parties except for themselves.
10) America is a paradise for wealthy, white, Christian, heterosexual males, like it was meant to be.


Vote Republican!

...not...

 

[Kulindahr]

Private regulators should not be allowed to be in the business. Private businesses should be highly regulated, and some industries nationalized. This isn't propaganda. It's just mere reality.

Private regulators INVENTED the business, and built successful business doing so. Where there are private regulatory companies, they still do better than the government does. That's reality -- yours is ideology.

It used to be, with building materials, that if a company got an idea, contractors could rely on UL to tell them if it was a good idea. Now we get stupid requirements that make jobs harder, because government regulators don't care if it's good, so long as it works. UL wouldn't certify anything for a company until it had also been tested by people who actually have to deal with the items -- field testing was part of the testing. Now bureaucrats sit in offices and decide.

You don't trust the fat cats in Washington (and frankly I don't trust them either so don't misrepresent my views), as I don't trust the fat cats in Wall Street. I think we need a real leftist to take power in Washington, along with a large leftist party... but that will never happen in this country because both political parties are in the pockets of corporations.

I don't trust bureaucrats -- they're the ones who make regulations that say cities can poison rivers with heavy metals, and the ones who turn forests into deserts.

If you think I trust the democrats to do the right thing, you're quite mistaken. The private sector should have no right to regulate itself, nor should responsibilities of regulation fall to private regulators. I suggest nationalization of ANY private regulator.

Thereby destroying their effectiveness. It's plain you haven't looked into this at all: UL still upholds higher standards than the government. If you want quality, the government should get out of everything UL and companies like it deal with.

No sir. I look at reality and facts. If you don't like it, it's too bad. You can subscribe to any ignorance you want I will not be part of it. The private sector is responsible for much of what is wrong with this world.

Yes, the private sector is responsible for much of what's wrong -- and the private sector has been the most effective at fixing it. It's just that private sector regulators are few and far between. The ones that exist make the government's version look lame. How UL got so effective, I'm not sure, but they did it before government regulation came along, and they raised the standards in the construction industry higher than government requires yet; their certification standards are still higher than what the government has.

Though if they go for-profit, as is being considered, I might get concerned. As a NfP, they can't be bribed or influenced; they're dedicated to what they do and no one can sway them. If profits get involved, I'm not so confident that will remain true.

 

[Kulindahr]

No. You don't understand where I'm coming from. I speak of reality, not ideology. If you have a problem with that... that's your own fault.

FUnny, because you keep denying reality.

The government can improve the situation which is rather dire. Effectiveness would not be lost in nationalization. That's a myth.

Effectiveness has already been lost by the government stepping in. UL's standards are higher than the government's, which means contractors can now be cheap and use the lesser standard. I see housing all the time which is crap because it used stuff only good enough to meet government standards -- the lower one. Those houses will be falling apart in twenty years.

The private sector are not the ones that are most effective at fixing it. I can just point at numerous European countries that have far greater government regulations then this one.

Referencing a situation where there has never been choice or competition is pointless when talking about choice and competition. You may as well say that firearms are useless for self-defense and defend your statement by pointing to places where no one is allowed to have any, or say bark dust is no good for the soil by pointing to places where it's never been used.

You misrepresented my views, and that I do not appreciate. We seem to come from far different world views, and likely there would be clashes of opinion. However, I do understand reality and I study the situation carefully.

And I will simply have to agree to disagree here as this doesn't seem to be getting anywhere. Have a nice day.

You're studying things from an ivory-tower perspective that has nothing to do with the nitty-gritty of actually getting things done.

 

[thevofl]

But then again libertarians are typically intellectually lazy... you fit into that very well. I don't expect you ever to engage anyone here in constructive debate. You just shoot them down... and dismiss anything that goes up against your pie in the sky belief system.

Oh! The irony!

 

[Kulindahr]

Correction: If you knew anything about poverty you wouldn't have the beliefs you do. Trust me, if you grew up poor, your world views would be different. But you're an elitist.

You are astoundingly clueless. Only a devoted ideological fervor could do this to you.

I may have lived about the poverty level for ten years of my life. Other than that I've been spending a lot of time experiencing how government works very hard to keep people poor, penalize them for being poor, make things harder to do, allow the powerful to poison and plunder with little hindrance, and nearly guarantee that nothing works well.

I've worked construction, landscaping, maintenance, carpentry, plumbing, and more. In every case I've seen how what government does best is get in the way and make things cost more. While much of the private sector can't be trusted (correlates with size of company), most business people pride themselves on doing good work with good materials. In every case but the landscaping, I've found that the way to find something good is to suspect what the government says and find a private-sector regulatory outfit like UL that certifies products -- because their livelihoods, and generally their honor and reputation, are on the line.

 

[opinterph]

The American Meat Institute disputes the overall conclusion reported by the Translational Genomics Research Institute. Which of these entities is [most] correct?

Anybody have ideas about what causes drug resistant bacteria to appear in the meat supply?​

 

[Kulindahr]

The American Meat Institute disputes the overall conclusion reported by the Translational Genomics Research Institute. Which of these entities is [most] correct?

Anybody have ideas about what causes drug resistant bacteria to appear in the meat supply?​

The root cause is heavy use of antibiotics in raising the cattle. That has produced drug-resistant strains to appear, and in the slaughtering process these can move right along with the meat.

The idiots should stop using antibiotics except when livestock are sick.

 

[opinterph]

The idiots should stop using antibiotics except when livestock are sick.

What entity regulates antibiotic use in livestock?

 

[opinterph]

AMI Says U.S. Meat, Poultry Safe

Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria in Animals and Unnecessary Human Health Risks​