It’s not that we didn’t already know that the nation’s industrial food system is a toxic network of dangerous, low-paying jobs, often yielding dangerous products. But sometimes it helps to be jarringly reminded, as Michael Moss did yesterday in his New York Times story on e-coli in hamburger—a sober reminder that the enforcement of policies and laws to protect eaters from contaminated food is a sham and that, as always, bottom-line profitability rules over food quality and safety.
Like the big banks that are “too large to fail,” big beef—the four corporations that now control over 83% of all U.S. beef slaughter—seem to be relatively immune from government oversight and enforcement. On packinghouse floors low-wage immigrants and workers of color (now over 60% of the workforce) labor in difficult working conditions in some of the most dangerous jobs in the nation. Beef carcasses move by line workers at speeds that mock sanitation standards and invite contamination. The food factories that grind various “parts” into the stuff of hamburgers are notoriously lax in clean production oversight. In short, the burger you get at the store or restaurant may, indeed, be hazardous to your health.
The food sector is one big revolving door between the industry and the government that supposedly oversees and regulates it. The Department of Justice stands idly by as corporate concentration increases dramatically, as it has in recent decades. The Department of Agriculture observes passively, even though its inspectors can stop the packinghouse lines any time for any reason. The Department of Labor occasionally steps up to protect workers, but is usually not available. The Food and Drug Administration hangs around the perimeter waiting for yet another of the interminable outbreaks of food contamination. Everyone is responsible; no one is responsible.
The revolving door does have some strange and unexpected exits. David Ray, currently vice president of public affairs for the American Meat Institute (AMI)—the industry trade group—not only worked for the Department of Agriculture, but also served for fifteen years as a chief media spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), the notorious anti-immigrant organization. Ray once stated on CNN that “The presence of millions and millions of illegal aliens in the country depresses wages and working conditions for American families.” That was obviously said before he went to work at AMI, which represents and defends an industry utterly and completely dependent on low-wage immigrant workers.
Ray was in top form for the entire meatpacking industry last year in response to an inquiry from Bob Collins of Minnesota Public Radio last year. Collins was baffled when AMI awarded The Quality Pork Processors plant its Award of Honor for its worker health and safety program—at the same time the plant was being sued by employees denied workers comp for a neurological illness allegedly linked to contaminated animal brain tissue. Responding to Collins’ puzzlement over the bad timing of the Award, Ray said, “Well, the award is not a measurement of the response to a single situation, rather it’s the measurement of the total health and safety program of the plant.” Undeterred,Collins pursued his answer, only to be referred to someone else. “That’s when I find out that the person I needed to talk to is on a plane this afternoon. I wonder how things are at the plants that didn’t win the award.”
We wonder too. But we all know the answer.