Posted on 01/09/2019 4:53:36 PM PST by bgill
Routine food inspections aren't getting done because of the partial government shutdown, but checks of the riskiest foods are expected to resume next week, the Food and Drug Administration said Wednesday. The agency said it's working to bring back about 150 employees to inspect riskier foods such as cheese, infant formula and produce. FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said the agency can't make the case that "a routine inspection of a Nabisco cracker facility" is necessary during the shutdown, however. The FDA doesn't oversee meat and poultry and those inspections are continuing. Gottlieb said FDA inspections would have ramped up this week for the first time since the holidays, so the lapse in inspections of high-risk foods will not be significant if they resume soon. He said his concern would grow if those inspections were halted for several weeks. The FDA conducts about 8,400 domestic inspections a year, or an average of 160 a week, Gottlieb said.
(Excerpt) Read more at cbsaustin.com ...
Well, until the next time the pickers wipe their backsides with it.
Ok, so just cook things fully for a few months. Got it.
More fear mongering.
In my own experience, USDA and FDA add very little to food safety and food security. They are bureaucrats, in a complex system, who are extremely slow, take a long time to decide anything, and often spend a lot of time and money chasing down useless, dead ends.
No farmers are food processors are in the business of killing their customers. nearly all things done for food safety are implemented within the industry, voluntarily, new quality initiatives, mutual self-policing, inspections, testing and reporting.
If the USDA and FDA were shut down permanently, you would see no change in food safety.
Which is an argument for constraining the availability of low skill, low wage immigrant labor to get to the point where automation is viable and reliable machines harvest lettuce and do not pollute it.
As far as the media is concerned the argument that bad things will happen if function x, y or z of the government is curtailed is as much an argument against the intransigent democrats as it is against the administration. It may not be pretty enough for the Washington media - but Trump is the first Republican with the balls to confront these issues. Prior Democratic and Republican Presidents have kicked this can down the road, ad infinitum. Until Trump.
People would be surprised to know how very few health inspectors there are outside the big cities. Here in podunkville, when you call in to the Health Dept. to complain about a restaurant, they tell you they don’t have the manpower to visit this far away.
About 25 years ago, the one and only local slaughter house inspector retired and wasn’t replaced.
Yep. Once a corporate, large-scale system is set up to accomodate inspections, no one is going to change that on a very temporary basis.
Oh Noes! No more food available till Nasty Nan, and Up Chuck say so!
First global warming..now this..the only option left is to give Trump his wall and then the shut down will end.
It’s for the children.
Face facts, if the self proclaimed Nobles in Congress have never moved these people into the same category of “essential services” as their drivers and bodyguards, then they’re not essential services.
Strange, I had an FDA inspection today. Nothing big, just nitpicking as they want to do.
FWIW osha paid us a visit today for a “routine” inspection.
nabisco needs a federal hack to tell them how to make good cookies. BF*()*)*)*)S
In addition the FDA doesn’t work the same way that USDA does when it comes to inspections.
FDA inspections are more in response to product issues and periodic inspections for confirmation. They don’t have anyone onsite 100% of the time in a drug facility or food plant the way that USDA does.
FAA and Defense does for very specific places, but never heard of FDA doing this unless there was a specific product issue.
Well, that's it then.
We are all gonna die.
Yep.
.
Aren’t there any Governors, state legislators, mayors, city council members, and other state/local officials who know anyone that ever eats food? This whole idea of having a big nanny state in faraway Washington DC babysitting everything is absurd.
We’re all gonna die!
People forget or don’t realize that the vast majority of government services that we have come to depend on (right or wrong) come from state and local governments. Not the gods (little g) in DC.
Which is why this partial shutdown of the federal government is not the sky falling. Most of it is stuff the federales shouldn’t be doing anyway. Are we really going suffer if the Department of “Education” is inactive for a month or two? I’d call that a BIG plus.
I briefly knew a food inspector at a beef kill plant. He just sit in his office all day drinking. Guess the plant supplied his booze.
God forbid the American people realize that they can live just fine without the 99.9% of government that we’ve been brainwashed into believing we can’t live without.
“The FDA conducts about 8,400 domestic inspections a year, or an average of 160 a week.”
8,400 inspections.
Say 2000 hour work year, and 4 hours per inspection (including travel).
That’s 500 inspections in a year, so they would need 168 inspectors if it was a private firm.
In 2010, the FDA had almost 15,000 employees. Granted, they do more than just food inspections, but still.
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