A fly in the free market ointment
by David Atkins (“thereisnospoon”)
In other news, there’s a record turkey recall going on:
More than 36 million pounds of fresh and frozen ground turkey are being voluntarily recalled by food giant Cargill Inc. because of the possibility of salmonella contamination.
Health authorities say the poultry could be contaminated with Salmonella Heidelberg, a strain of salmonella that killed a California man and caused the illness of 79 others.
Cargill said the ground turkey was produced at the company’s Springdale, Ark., facility between Feb. 20 and Aug. 2. Production at the plant has been suspended.
“Given our concern for what has happened, and our desire to do what is right for our consumers and customers, we are voluntarily removing our ground turkey products from the marketplace,” Steve Willardsen, president of Cargill’s turkey processing business, said in a statement.”
“This is, if not the largest, one of the largest class-one food recalls to happen in U.S. history,” said William D. Marler, a Seattle attorney who specializes in food safety litigation. A class-one recall involves a health hazard that has a reasonable probability of causing health problems or death.
So far there’s no indication of overt malfeasance by Cargill, though it’s possible and even likely that damaging information might come out in the future. The recall will obviously be very expensive to the company, thanks to pinpointed work by the FDA.
I suppose this would be a bad time to point out that conservatives think that consumers would be better served by defunding the FDA, freeing up money that would best go into the Cargill CEO’s next tax cut, which will enable him to magically create manservant and maid jobs in his multiple mansions. That will totally make all those salmonella cases worth it in the grand scheme of things.
And if Cargill makes a bunch of people sick or dead? Why, the magic power of the free market will deal Cargill a huge blow without the need for burdensome government intrusion. Consumers will know which brands of turkey are produced by Cargill just as surely as consumers know which brands of paper towel are manufactured by Koch Industries. Isn’t it obvious?