Free The Steak!
Some people feel most comfortable buying a steak that some government employee has given their stamp of approval.
I would love to buy meat direct from a rancher, and I'd personally assume any risks from eating that meat (not there are likely to be any). But the government won't allow that.
Daryl James writes at the Real Glendive Review:
Glendive farmer Dena Hoff has her freezer stocked with meat from animals born, raised and processed on her own property. But she has to turn away neighbors who ask about buying some. Federal regulations forbid the sale of meat processed anywhere except government-approved plants with round-the-clock inspectors.The rules mean that when Hoff and her husband have sheep ready for market, they must load the animals onto trucks in Glendive and haul them about 220 miles away to feedlots and slaughterhouses near Billings or 120 miles across the state line to Bowman, N.D. People who prefer local food are out of luck.
"It doesn't make a whole lot of sense," Hoff says. "These processing plants should be where the animals are raised."
COVID-19 shows one reason why. Consolidation keeps costs low when everything runs smoothly. But the system puts consumers at risk if anything goes wrong at one of the massive processing plants controlled by a small handful of multinational companies. A single disaster can leave hundreds of grocery stores with empty shelves.
...Proposed legislation, called the PRIME Act, would provide relief. The reform would end federal restrictions on custom slaughterhouses, allowing states to set their own guidelines. Residents in many jurisdictions would gain new freedom to buy and sell locally produced meat as more facilities opened.
The ones that currently exist are booked months in advance, showing high demand for local meat processing. Yet neighborhood butchers do not step in to fill the gap due to USDA restrictions. "There are not enough butchers because of regulations," Hoff says.
Easing the regulatory burden would incentive more custom slaughterhouses to open. The nonprofit Institute for Justice, a public-interest law firm that fights for economic liberty, has joined the campaign urging lawmakers to pass the PRIME Act. The bill makes sense under any circumstance, but especially during crises like COVID-19.
One effect would be shorter supply chains. "Our calves and lambs wouldn't have to go to a feedlot, and then off to a packer and then off to a retailer," Hoff says.
Allowing local transactions also would give buyers and sellers more options. "You walk into a supermarket, and everything you want is there in every kind of iteration," Hoff says. "But most of it isn't good for you. If people had the choice, many would prefer buying directly from their neighbors."
PRIME Act opponents cite health and safety concerns, but farmers like Hoff have been eating locally produced meat for generations without incident. In response to a public records request from the Farm & Ranch Freedom Alliance, the USDA reported zero cases of foodborne illness at custom slaughterhouses in at least the past eight years.
I'm sure there are lobbyists mucking it up in there, but people who buy meat are almost always adults. We should be allowed to make adult shopping decisions without having them edited by the government.
I buy my beef directly from a ranch in my home town which ships their cattle off to a processing plant about seventy miles away. It is flash frozen, and vacuum sealed. The ranchers pick it up and distributed to their customers who pay in advance. There is no middle man or feed lot. The beef is grass fed.
Contrary to popular belief, finishing in a feed lot, is an unnecessary step, not required by any law federal or state. More and more ranches and farms are doing this direct marketing.
If you feel perfectly fine buying and consuming meat sold out of the back of a truck in your nearest mall parking lot, I suggest you read up more on mad cow disease. Unfortunately, it is not the only bad thing out there.
I’m very libertarian, but don’t even hunt anymore. I think consuming wild meat, or uninspected meat, is an unacceptable risk.
I’ve seen too many unexplained cases of a sudden brain wasting mimicking Alzheimer’s in friends in the 50’s and 60’s. These people went from healthy and vital to dead in six months.
Isab at August 11, 2020 11:03 PM
Aw, crap, not this again.
Well, go look up the Happy Cow Creamery again.
Out here in the sticks, you may even buy your own, walking, cow, to do with as you please so long as you are not cruel.
Whack, butcher, eat.
Meanwhile, there are fifty people between you and that steak you got at Outback.
Once again, I must apparently explain that standards and inspections are why you aren't suffering today. If you don't want to hear that from me, then go watch The Food That Built America on the History Channel, and note the incidence of stomach cancer and poisonings in American cities before refrigeration and handling standards were imposed.
Radwaste at August 12, 2020 4:30 AM
Let's not forget the fight to bring pasteurized milk to New York City. Dairy farmers were feeding their cows cheaper distillery mash, which produced thin swill milk. To make it look more like fresh milk, they added plaster, sawdust, etc.
Children were getting sick and dying from the germs and bacteria in swill milk. Pasteurization would kill most of the bacteria in swill milk, but farmers resisted the cost. Consistent and reliable refrigeration solved a great many problem, too.
The Milk Wars: Start with Part One and go through to the end. It's an interesting story, albeit one told in an anti-corporate way a la The Jungle, but still interesting.
We think these kinds of abuses cannot happen any more, that they're relics of the past. Remove all regulation and we'll see them again, but more sophisticated because the tools of fraud and deception have gotten better.
While it's fine and good to say that everyone should have the choice, choice requires information and that is sometimes in short supply; duplicity never is. I agree you should be able to buy milk, cheese, steak, etc. directly from the source, but I think the USDA and FDA do serve a purpose and should not, so to speak, be put out to pasture in the name of libertarian idealism.
We need some government, not as much as we have now, but some. The tricky part is determining how much and keeping it at that size.
Conan the Grammarian at August 12, 2020 5:50 AM
During World War II my grandfather was an extremely senior Veterinary Officer in the United States Army. He was in charge of inspecting food shipments both coming into base for the trainees, and going overseas to Europe at Fort Jackson South Carolina.
At one time he literally stood in the main gate, and stopped trucks from a local dairy from delivering tainted milk to the base. The owner of the dairy complained to his congressman. It didn’t matter. The congressman had no authority to override an Army health inspector.
Another example is the Odwalla juice debacle. Pasteurization serves an important purpose.
Isab at August 12, 2020 7:06 AM
Guess you’ve never read Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.
The meat processing industry is probably over regulated. But, government agencies are risk adverse. A thorough and honest review, with pruning of obsolete and unnecessary standards would be helpful. But, to inform the public would require reporters who are willing to leave their climate controlled offices and get dirty and blood splattered to actually learn about the industry - and leave their (and have their editors leave their) liberal ideologies behind. So, I don’t see much chance.
Over protection leads to unnecessary costs. But, under protection can lead to unnecessary illnesses and death. Whether the Wuhan Virus got its start in the Wet Market there, or only had a chance to spread to many people who were customers there, that is the danger of an unregulated food industry. While I don’t like the costs and inefficiency of over regulation, I like less the lock downs, masks and social distancing. What choice do you want to make, because choices have consequences.
Wfjag at August 12, 2020 8:56 AM
Long time ago; and i don't remember it being corporate-friendly. Not that everything needs to be, or should be.
Conan the Grammarian at August 12, 2020 11:44 AM
I've read _The Jungle_, but...
1) It was over a century ago,
2) it was fiction,
3) and it was about concentrating the slaughterhouse business in a few huge plants running at breakneck speed - which is exactly the kind of operation encouraged by the current FDA regulations. A small shop processing only a few animals per hour has a much easier time keeping the operation clean and safe, but it can't afford to pay for a government inspector on-site all the time it is running.
The PRIME Act does not change the regulation of the big plants, it just loosens regulation on small plants so they can exist.
markm at August 18, 2020 6:31 PM
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