Salmonella

…Companies recover only about 36 percent of targeted products in a typical recall. That means that literally millions of people stand just an undercooked egg or an unwashed hand away from a nasty case of salmonella.” ~ Tom Philpott, grist.org

380 million eggs are being recalled nationwide that were distributed under 10 different brands now in 17 different states were traced back to a single producer, the Iowa-based Wright County Farms and farm owner Austin “Jack” DeCoster.

This is not just about eggs. This is just the latest “hiccup” for the food industry. Remember when you couldn’t eat peanut butter? Spinach? Beef? The ramifications are so far reaching.

The cause: Surprise, surprise grist.org reports A ‘habitual offender’ unleashes nearly half a billion salmonella-tainted eggs

grist.org found in 1996 the same egg farmer/supplier made the news for his violations and again, periodically, since then.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration last month fined Mr. DeCoster $3.6 million for violations in the workplace and at workers’ housing.

Federal investigators said they found workers, many of whom are immigrants from Latin America, handling manure and dead chickens with their bare hands, and living amid rats and cockroaches in the company’s trailer park.

It starts with the soil and plants, then animals, then the people who work on these industrial exploitation farms are in harms way. You can think it doesn’t affect you then that misery spreads to you, the consumer, in the form of something widespread and tainted. It’s then that we find how ineffective the authorities are at tracking agri-businesses’ products because they have maximized every opportunity to maximize their profits.

These industrial farms with their agri-business profits on steroids schemes have been killing people slowly over time and getting away with it. The least we can do is get informed so we can make better choices.

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