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The USDA will stop using sodium cyanide "bombs" in Idaho (at least temporarily) following an incident that put a 14-year-old in the hospital and killed his dog:
About a month after an anti-predator device spit sodium cyanide in the face of an unsuspecting boy and killed his dog, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has announced it is ending its use of the M-44 mechanisms in Idaho indefinitely.
"We take seriously the incident in Idaho," Jason Suckow, western regional director of the USDA's Wildlife Services agency, told conservation groups in a letter Monday. "We immediately responded by removing all M-44s from the area, initiating an inquiry into the incident, and launching a review of current [Wildlife Services] operating procedures."
Suckow noted the agency has "removed all M-44s currently deployed on all land ownerships in Idaho" and has refrained from planting new ones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @07:41PM (28 children)
If there's no regulation to require tainted meat be labelled as tainted, where's the fraud? Fraud by omission because you bought meat but the seller neglected to tell you the meat was tainted?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @08:28PM (27 children)
That mindset is what popularized the phrase "kill all the lawyers!" Rather than trying to decry the every possible loophole as a requirement for moar regulation, a glance at the circumstances is enough. If there is a market for whatever void was filled by regulation, it will be filled in the absence of regulation by private outfits such as the Underwriters Laboratories.
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Sunday April 16 2017, @09:10PM (26 children)
>>>If there is a market for whatever void was filled by regulation, it will be filled
So why wasn't it? Why was the sale of tainted meat widespread enough for Upton Sinclair to make a mint off "The Jungle"? Why wasn't that void filled?
When you can answer that question, feel free to get back to me...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @09:31PM (25 children)
It was, as per my example. For your example, well, "government hates competition", and governments typically use armed men with guns to shut down anything it hates.
What, you thought US government didn't exist in 1906? Who do you think was keeping corporations from being sued into oblivion with their wanton trespass of air and water pollution?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:18PM (24 children)
It was, as per my example.
[citation needed]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:22PM (23 children)
Underwriters Laboratories, a privately-owned safety standards company, working since 1894. [ul.com]
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 16 2017, @10:49PM (22 children)
I've never seen a food item stamped with the UL logo.
The question put to you was why did no private group step forward to deal with tainted MEAT.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:05PM (21 children)
Nice goalpost moving. Too bad you got caught.
This thread started with my blanket slamming of government regulations which displace private (and thereby accountable) companies providing the same types of services. One example of such a private standards company which has survived government extermination is UL, as previously mentioned, and is so overwhelmingly popular even as an optional expense, that the vast majority of manufacturers that sell products on store shelves (thus subject to customer pre-sale inspection) choose to pay UL to test and label their products.
Unlike the UL, if the FDA were to, say, approve drugs which do more harm [wikipedia.org] than good [fdareview.org], you can't "fire" the FDA and use a more trustworthy safety-testing organization as armed government thugs would hunt you down, kill you, and sell your stuff for their profit.
No reports yet of UL murdering their customers.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Sunday April 16 2017, @11:41PM (20 children)
Talking in the mirror? The question was:
So why wasn't it? Why was the sale of tainted meat widespread enough for Upton Sinclair to make a mint off "The Jungle"? Why wasn't that void filled?
And your answer was Underwriter's Laboratory.
BZZZZT!!!
So kindly put the goalpost back where you found it and answer the question.
I have no love for the FDA. It needs to be chopped up for firewood and replaced. But something needs to be there and no private organization was stepping up to the plate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @12:04AM (19 children)
BZZZT, yourself:
You appear to be literate, and so I'll thank you to kindly follow the thread as a literate: a troll mocked USDA critics by calling for the sale of unregulated tainted meat, and I answered the troll's praise of government regulation by using a surviving example of a private standards body.
You appear to want to claim victory for government regulators by using a field carved out with deadly force, as evidenced by the likely result of anyone ignoring the FDA/USDA and going straight to the customers with a product the FDA/USDA considers within its turf. Witness the oppressed sellers of raw milk.
The fact that the UL has both survived and thrived, and entered into just about every market space except automobiles, foods, and drugs, should be telling.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @12:36AM (18 children)
No. you were asked SPECIFICALLY who stepped up to protect consumers from tainted meat such that the USDA would represent a government excess squashing the private sector. You have no good answer and you know it. All thumping your chest will do is get cheeto stains on your teeshirt.
We HAD to have the USDA exactly because the industry showed no interest in self regulation and nobody else had any leverage to do it.
We might possibly have been better off if the industry had had enough foresight to self-regulate before regulation was imposed, but it didn't and your fond wishes won't change that.
Likewise if dumbass hadn't sold a bunch of lethal elixir sulfanilamide for children, we wouldn't have needed an FDA, but he did and the FDA was born. Personally I believe it's past time to tear the FDA down and replace it, but I still don't see any evidence the industry is ready to step up and make a government regulator unnecessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @12:51AM (17 children)
Aaaand now you're back to shuffling goalposts around. Pointing guns at people is no way to conduct business (so long as the specific people being threatened have not threatened or defrauded others first), regardless of the "morality" of the end result.
Collective punishment is bad, mmkay?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @01:08AM (16 children)
Since you have yet to answer the actual question asked, I'll presume you personally enjoy eating meat that someone with TB spat upon.
Few would make that choice willingly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @01:28AM (14 children)
Alright, I'll have at your question: "1. Why was the sale of tainted meat widespread enough for Upton Sinclair to make a mint off "The Jungle"? 2. Why wasn't that [presumed] void filled?"
1. Fear sells. See "terrorism" today as it applies to the American everyman.
2. For one possibility, there was actually no market for additional services for the detection of tainted meat, in that meat customers were by and large happy with the state of meat commerce due to their continued purchases of meat and apparent unwillingness to pay for additional detection services, and/or were relying upon laws against fraud to deter the knowing sale of tainted meat presented as edible meat. (If such anti-fraud laws went unenforced, that is an indictment against government's ability to defend the private person, not an argument in favor of imposing yet another government-run agency.)
Another likelihood is that the forcible imposition of government agencies into the field subsequently destroyed said market because private-market competition was unable to overcome the lethal force government threatens potential competitors with.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @02:02AM (13 children)
Or they simply never imagined people producing and selling meat would be so filthy. In fact there was a great clamor for some sort of regulation after the exposé and nobody but the federal government stood up to answer demands for regulation. If you're going to comment on historical events, you really should actually learn something about history.
You didn't actually answer the question BTW, you just said in essence "aww, nobody gave a crap about that anyway" in direct contradiction to established history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @02:19AM (11 children)
Yeah, be careful with your opinions on history. If you care to scrutinize them beyond the books listed in your syllabus, you will often find it's different from the official version. "Clamor for regulation", even if historically accurate, still indicates that there was likely no market for it (due to hysteria blown out of proportion to the actual opinions of the average meat-buyer, overall satisfaction with the existing quality of meat market, and/or an unwillingness to directly pay the additional costs for additional meat inspection services), or merely because those demanding government intervention thought they could get something for free by supporting a new government agency - which of course is anything but free.
Your dislike of my answer doesn't negate the fact that an answer was nonetheless provided.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @02:39AM (10 children)
I'll have to read between the lines and presume your answer is nobody since you haven't named anyone.
I get that you can't understand how your simplistic understanding of the market failed to match reality and that you're now inventing a new history to try to make it fit. You'll finde the opposite approach will give you a better understanding and perhaps change your understanding such that it will match reality.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @02:55AM (9 children)
Are you being intentionally dishonest [soylentnews.org]? If not, how do you justify calling said linked post "no answer"?
I'll take my "simplistic market understanding" against your "support of the use of deadly force against innocents, willfully ignorant or not" any day. The reality that deadly force was used to impose a monopoly within a market by no means justifies the monopoly's existence nor proves that there was a market void to be filled.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @02:57AM (8 children)
The question was WHO. Where is there a who in all of that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @03:05AM (7 children)
It was, was it [soylentnews.org]?
Perhaps my assessment of your literacy was inaccurate...?
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @03:10AM (6 children)
My mistake, perhaps because I am becoming bored of this. Why do you suppose the exposé raised such furor if there was no interest in regulating the filth? How do you reconcile that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @03:30AM (5 children)
I did proffer likely reasons to reconcile the situation [soylentnews.org], even beyond my core point and principle that the underlying problem with tainted meat wasn't with a lack of meat regulation as much as it was about the fraud committed by merchants offering inedible meat as edible.
In summation of my previous post linked above, asking "why did the USDA need creating to fill a market void in meat regulation" begs the question that there was a void to be filled in the first place. I highlighted this by drawing a parallel to today's overblown hysteria regarding terrorism and its effect on the average American, along with the apparent unwillingness for the bulk of meat customers to directly pay a premium for meat inspection services. The latter was attributed to a lack of an actual problem with tainted meat in terms of risk-vs-cost, and/or the desire of the voting public to "get something for free" using government guns, which of course is a core violation of free-market principles.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @03:36AM (4 children)
In other words, you are re-writing history by claiming nobody really cared all that much. Not even enough for a little food safety theater.
That really doesn't jibe with the known history. That's the part where I suggested you might have better luck changing your model rather than trying to re-write history.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @03:46AM (3 children)
So you choose to disengage by completely dismissing the answer I provided.
Continue to assume that historical fact is truth verbatim out of your government-supported educational material, and continue to insist that government manages the affairs of people better than the people themselves do when force and fraud are not tolerated.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @04:00AM (2 children)
I choose to believe the many historical sources that jibe well with human nature rather than accept your alternate history which you offer with no citations whatsoever, yes.
This is very much consistent with my reaction to flat earthers and fake moon landing nuts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @04:57AM (1 child)
By dismissing the idea that the individual himself is the proper person to decide the management of his own affairs [soylentnews.org], including those of voluntary commerce, you are left supporting the only alternative of de facto slavery. Congratulations on being with the majority of human history on this one.
(Score: 2) by sjames on Monday April 17 2017, @02:48PM
Actually, what I reject is the idea that I should take an ACs word for an alternate history supported by nothing. I rtefuse to hand my agency over to a kook and you take offense.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday April 17 2017, @06:14AM
Let me interject here, from memory alone, first:
Around the time of the Civil War, food in general, and meat in particular, was sold to the military that was shamefully criminal. The troops were given slop that was unfit for hogs, or dogs. The state of Pennsylvania took an interest in the frauds committed against Pennsylvania troops, and set up an agency to inspect the food service facilities, and the food accepted by Pennsylvania units. Over time, that agency earned so much prestige, that food sellers who didn't even do business in Pennsylvania sought that agency's stamp of approval. There was a void for food safety standards, and the industry went to some effort to earn Pennsylvania's official stamp. I think that agency had a name something like Penn Dep't of agriculture.
Alright, memory is only so good. Let me go looking for something to back that up.
PDF with relevance - chrome-extension://oemmndcbldboiebfnladdacbdfmadadm/http://www.dtic.mil/get-tr-doc/pdf?AD=ADA235155 Wall of text warning for it though.
Another PDF with some relevance, and another WOT - https://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/8965597/MooreM.pdf?sequence=1 [harvard.edu]
Remotely related - http://www.allgov.com/departments/department-of-agriculture?detailsDepartmentID=568# [allgov.com] Here you can learn the origins of the USDA in 1862, though it offers little to support my claim above.
It seems I'm just not bright enough to enter a proper search term for the data I'm looking for. :^(
Further - I just walked through my kitchen, looking at food packages with the Pa Dept of Ag markings. They aren't to be found. Apparently, the practice of getting, and advertising, the Penna Dept of Ag approval has been dropped. Maybe I need to search for historical trivia, but I'm giving up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 17 2017, @02:23AM
You laughably presume that government food inspection prevents contamination of food. [grist.org]