What does it take for a plant to be shutdown pending corrective action?
The violations cited seem like they should be enough to warrant that. Because of their inaction, 9 peoples died. It's a failure of the regulatory agency
Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
91–100 of 112 posts
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I live, both of the two major supermarket chains (Publix x 3, Kroger x 3) with stores within an epsilon of my house feature Boar's Head next to their house brands. Other than the odd Food Depot there are no other grocery corp brands within probably 25 miles. I have historically frequently bought Boar's Head meats from the deli counter because I can get them sliced prosciutto thin and they have the texture to su…
Any tips on how to get started?
It is expensive to go blind in on buying artisanal charcuterie without knowing how to optimize for what you want. Kinda like California cheese. Good, but... $30/lb for cheddar?
I have eaten at restaurants that have "charcuterie boards" but if they're reasonable in price... you get what you pay for. An easy out is to put "prosciutto" on the board as the prize. Quotes because there's orders of magnitudes difference in price and flavor quality across "prosciutto" analogues.
My recommendation is, if you are at all adventurous in the kitchen, is to buy a copy of Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn's "Charcuterie", and just start making stuff that you think looks interesting. I have had quite few dinners where I contributed stuff out of that book and people raved. Nothing special about me, I just followed the recipes. It's an extraordinary cookbook. The vegetarian rilletes are great but I've had people swoon over the duck rilletes that started with me and a dusty farm and a couple of ducks (still quacking). (The book assumes you have duck parts, not live ducks.)
In the olden tymes I would say drop me a line if you needed help/more advice but in this weird world that doesn't seems to work anymore.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#93This is just like Blue Bell Ice cream. They killed people with their products. I'll never eat their stuff again and adding Boars head to the list.
A cautionary note: Often times a food manufacturing plant will contract with and produce multiple brands on the same equipment. For instance, I've seen brand name, store label, and bargain brand waffles come off the same line, with the same equipment and using the same ingredient stocks. Of course, an industrial food plant isn't going to have a searchable presence online. It is quite difficult to find out exactly wha…
"Store brand" products are an IMO egregious case of this. Often it's utterly impossible to tell where a product has been manufcatured (as in: plant or factory), and somewhat ironically, correlated product recalls are often the only way of establishing where a store sources its "in house" brands.
The fact is that "in house" isn't, and what both the merchant and manufacturer are in fact preserving is the market ignorance of who the ultimate producer is.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
When regulators can't shut a plant down for a violation like this, it's not actually regulated. People watch historic documentaries (like HBO's Chernobyl /s) and ooh and aah about how stupid the Soviet safety and bureaucratic culture was, without a shred of self-reflection about how our systems also make ruinous outcomes inevitable.
Underregulated and unregulated are different things. Saying that it's unregulated makes the solution appear simple, just add regulation. Recognizing that it is already ineffectively regulated implies that regulation doesn't have to just be present, it has to be good. But then again it's a lot harder to come up with a solution that works past spherical cows in a vacuum so let's just call it unregulated.
It's a problem of incentive alignment, which is a core problem in politics. People and organizations love to maximize their gain at the cost of distributed harm - and all the political incentives, in any system of government are strongly aligned with this sort of thing.
The answer to this is, of course, good governance.
The answer to how to get good governance is, of course, a shoulder shrug emoji. (I can't give you a recipe for good governance, but I can definitely give you one for bad governance...)
Nine people are dead, the firm is at fault, and there are two broad forms of recourse. You can do something that lightly taps the owners' pocketbook, through suits filed in civil court, or you can start holding congressional hearings until you find nine or more people that you can execute.
You won't get the latter unless there is enough public outrage to get meaningful action. Unlike the courts, it is a very limited resource, it requires incredible effort to activate, and the payoff (better food safety, justice, encouraging the others) is distributed.
The solution is there, it's just infeasible given resource limitations.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Underregulated and unregulated are different things. Saying that it's unregulated makes the solution appear simple, just add regulation. Recognizing that it is already ineffectively regulated implies that regulation doesn't have to just be present, it has to be good. But then again it's a lot harder to come up with a solution that works past spherical cows in a vacuum so let's just call it unregulated.
It's a problem of incentive alignment, which is a core problem in politics. People and organizations love to maximize their gain at the cost of distributed harm - and all the political incentives, in any system of government are strongly aligned with this sort of thing. The answer to this is, of course, good governance. The answer to how to get good governance is, of course, a shoulder shrug emoji. (I can't give you…
> you can start holding congressional hearings until you find nine or more people that you can execute.
I like it when people just out themselves as extremists.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a problem of incentive alignment, which is a core problem in politics. People and organizations love to maximize their gain at the cost of distributed harm - and all the political incentives, in any system of government are strongly aligned with this sort of thing. The answer to this is, of course, good governance. The answer to how to get good governance is, of course, a shoulder shrug emoji. (I can't give you…
> you can start holding congressional hearings until you find nine or more people that you can execute. I like it when people just out themselves as extremists.
These deaths weren't caused by an oopsie daisies accident, this was a clear, blatant prioritisation of personal profit over human lives, with numerous warnings and opportunities to pull back. The plant's been operating despite years of failing inspections, and anyone in the industry knows that it shouldn't have.
Evil is the pursuit of personal gain at the direct expense of the welfare of others. This is the poster child for it. It's not an indirect consequence, it's not a 'we tried and there was still a bad outcome', it's not a 'this stuff is hard and we got unlucky', it's not a 'there are inherent risks to this activity that can't be well mitigated', it's not a 'we didn't know this was dangerous', it's not a 'all the alternatives looked bad'. It's actively and playing Russian Roulette with the lives of your customers, and it killed people.
There's nothing extreme about wanting justice for such blatant disregard for human life.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
The farmers almost never do the processing, Certainly none of the farms I have seen do. Which defeats the point of buying the foods at issue from a farmer, unless you are suggesting that everyone buy the equipment they need to make deli meat at home from the quarter-cow they just purchased. Both the animals and the processing are done with as many corners cut as they can get away with because something thats simply n…
> Which defeats the point of buying the foods at issue from a farmer, unless you are suggesting that everyone buy the equipment they need to make deli meat at home from the quarter-cow they just purchased. Most farmers have a butcher that they will bring the animal to so you don't need to handle it. I have never had to process any animals myself or even bring them to a butcher. Considering your whole post is based of…
Perhaps these small local suppliers are better, because they can charge boutique prices to the kind of discerning person who doesn't ride the bus to Walmart, but drives out to the roadside stand in their SUV and 5 kids and a husband help load the stuff in their coolers.
Or they can sell mail-order, or to the suburban farmers markets nearby.
The local co-ops are a perennial cult favorite and appeal to epicurean aficionados, but they're not getting equal shelf space at Safeway or enjoying economies of scale and amazing subsidies. Yet.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
This discussion is about deli meat. Are you implying that Frank the Farmer down the road making baloney in a bathtub is "healthier and tastes better" than processed deli cuts made in a USDA inspected factory? Not excusing what happened here at all but this assertion and all "buy local" hysteria is simply subjective hippy nonsense. A few years back some "local" cheese makers got busted with plenty of food safety and q…
Could you link to an article on those local (to where, btw?) cheesemakers?
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think your perception of "premium" is flawed in this case.
People keep saying that in this thread, but Boar’s Head does taste better than the crap that was more common before it. I’ve since found better deli meats, but even if I never eat another Boar’s Head product again, I’ll never eat Oscar Meyer or the other crap that was on the shelf next to it either again, or whatever Safeway was selling in its deli before they did their whole rebrand to serving Boar’s Head (actually…
Tastes better but also has a better texture. For me it got to the point that I would rather have deli meat less than get more of some cheaper brand.
Re: Boar's Head plant posed an 'imminent threat' years before listeria outbreak
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> you can start holding congressional hearings until you find nine or more people that you can execute. I like it when people just out themselves as extremists.
These deaths weren't caused by an oopsie daisies accident, this was a clear, blatant prioritisation of personal profit over human lives, with numerous warnings and opportunities to pull back. The plant's been operating despite years of failing inspections, and anyone in the industry knows that it shouldn't have. Evil is the pursuit of personal gain at the direct expense of the welfare of others. This is the poster ch…
And justice is finding 9 or more people and executing them?
It's clear you don't care about justice or you'd be looking for the people responsible and punishing them based on how much culpability they have, personally.
What you're describing is eye-for-an-eye vengeance.