First up, the FDA is suspending quality control testing at the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) Proficiency Testing Program, according to a report from Reuters. The program tests for parasites like Cyclospora in spinach and the pesticide glyphosate in barley, among other foods. The suspension was announced internally at the FDA on Tuesday, according to Reuters, which cites an email distributed about staff leaving. The program oversees testing at about 170 labs, which will no longer get quality control checks through at least Sept. 30.
The changes to FERN are a direct result of staffing cuts at the HHS, which oversees agencies like the FDA and CDC. Kennedy is overseeing a reduction in force at the agency that’s seeing about 20,000 people leave through layoffs and departures.
Second, and perhaps even more troubling, is a report from CBS News that the FDA is currently making plans to end most food safety inspections at the federal level. The theory, if you can call it that, is that food safety is something that should only be done at the local level, and you don’t want federal inspectors to just “duplicate” work already done by states.
The brain worms are in full control and are starting to try to take over the United States.
This is like that one show, The Strain on fx where’s that old guy with a walking cane when you need him?
Out of all of the worms our country could get, why didn’t we get the ones from a truckstop men’s room eggsalad. We could have been stronger than Hercules and smarter than Cher. But nooo, we had to get ones that like dying political dynasty afterbirth, wonderful.
I swear even before this stuff I’ve noticed quality slipping. The same kinda cost-cutting that makes simple things like packaging work less well than it did when I was a kid (how often does a bag of something’s zipper just rip off and make it impossible to close the thing??)…I could swear I’m starting to see that cost squeeze hit the quality of the products. Finding bones in chicken more often, various grossness in deli meat more often. To say nothing of the reports of nasty conditions at plants that keep coming up.
Maybe it’s all the children working the meat packing plants these days, I’ve always said children make terrible butchers! Should be exciting to see how much more interesting all our food products get in coming years.
All jokes aside, I recently went in on a quarter cow with a friend, from a local rancher. Not an option for everyone, I realize, but I’m starting to buy more locally. I hate to be doom and gloom, but the institutions keeping us safe are being dismantled, visibly, in front of us. And they were not exactly thriving before, either.
As someone who lives in the US what the fuck am I supposed to do now? Just shop at bougie grocery stores and pray that those brands are still following some kind of standards? I don’t want to leave my home but I am worried it’s just going to keep getting worse and worse and I am too disabled to fight in a civil war if it comes to that.
Some tips are:
- Buy from local farms if you can. The fewer steps from you, the fewer chances for the food to be contaminated.
- Cook everything. Spinach and other greens will not be clean from simply being washed. No chances, you cook everything like you cook chicken.
- Grow what you can. Sometimes all you can get away with is an herb plant, sometimes you can have tubers.
These types of obstacles are usually better tackled as a community than individualistically. Talking with your neighbors and friends so you can all work together on this stuff is usually your best bet.
Lol.
Such a profoundly, comically stupid society.