[HN Gopher] Former employee blows whistle on baby formula produc...
___________________________________________________________________
Former employee blows whistle on baby formula production plant tied
to outbreak
Author : droopyEyelids
Score : 243 points
Date : 2022-05-14 14:00 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.foodsafetynews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.foodsafetynews.com)
| ekianjo wrote:
| FDA as useless as ever...
| FunnyBadger wrote:
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| This essay claims to explain what's going on right now with the
| US baby formula shortages:
| https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...
|
| Some things are obviously overstated or cited for propaganda
| value. For example with our ability to detect elements in parts
| per billion or less, it matters very much how much arsenic etc.
| is in them, I doubt it makes any sense to reduce those to 1 part
| per trillion or less.
|
| TL:DR:
|
| Demonstrably the existing big three, Abbott Labs and Mead Johnson
| produce(d) 80% of the US market share, Nestle another 18% are
| very weakly regulated by the FDA.
|
| The hurdles for starting up in the US market are astronomical,
| and there's only one contract manufacturer Perrigo Nutritionals
| which not surprisingly has a large minimum order size. ByHeart
| became the 4th brand to have its own factory, first in 15 years.
|
| Half of all formula is bought by the Federal WIC program, and
| states negotiate a monopoly with one firm.
|
| All of the above results in prices double that in Europe,
| although I'd add we and the FDA are generally much more paranoid
| than they are, be it thalidomide long ago or COVID vaccines in
| the last couple of years.
| manachar wrote:
| > The hurdles for starting up in the US market are
| astronomical, and there's only one contract manufacturer
| Perrigo Nutritionals which not surprisingly has a large minimum
| order size. ByHeart became the 4th brand to have its own
| factory, first in 15 years.
|
| The regulatory hurdles for starting a brewery are even more
| intense (likely one of the most regulated of any consumable
| product short of marijuana), yet there's not been a shortage of
| new ones of those starting even during this current pandemic.
|
| I think the article leans too heavily on "heavily regulated" as
| a blame for lack of new players in the game and ignores the
| economic aspects are probably the bigger player.
|
| That division of a mature market seems fairly standard for a
| consumer food product. I suspect you could say much the same
| about peanut butter or cream cheese (both of which have had
| some shortages).
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| "The regulatory hurdles for starting a brewery are even more
| intense"
|
| What I was able to find just now says that's a qualitatively
| different thing, mostly pertaining to Prohibition and its end
| and taxes, and does not require a proctological safety exam
| of your supply chain, manufacturing, etc.
|
| As in, get a lawyer and jump through various hoops, as well
| as maybe some lower level government food safety licencing.
| It obviously makes a difference when you're selling something
| that's intrinsically poisonous to microbes by what a chemist
| once told me was merely the least toxic alcohol. Plus the
| difference in risks we're willing to have adults vs. babies
| take.
|
| And of course this is just one of many issues in the market,
| some of which I outlined, see also the subthread starting
| with a _Reason_ Volokh Conspiracy column and its links.
| thrill wrote:
| An approach is to legislate the amount of bonding required in
| processed foods to be significant enough that the bond seller has
| a proper incentive to ensure their risk-to-reward calculation is
| reasonably accurate by hiring their own agencies to perform
| adequate testing.
| Lendal wrote:
| > 6. Lack of Traceability
|
| This relates directly to what I do for a living. Product tracking
| in the manufacturing process can be very difficult & expensive,
| depending on how complicated the process is, but is very
| important and is critical to product safety & recalls. If you
| don't get it right babies could literally die, like what happened
| here. I work in the pharma/med-tech area but I'm sure this
| applies to food as well. They're both under FDA. Whether
| traceability is given the proper resources to get done right goes
| directly to company culture which is set at the top. The money to
| get it done comes from the top. You can't blame the peons,
| because all we can do is either blow the whistle or work for
| free. Those are the choices.
|
| Product tracking starts with data acquisition at the PLC/sensor
| level, gets stored in a database somewhere, and retrieved these
| days usually with a web-based interface.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| It is amazing how despite regularly checking news.google.com,
| reading the NY Times periodically, listening to two daily morning
| news podcasts, and listening to NPR in the car, that a)I only
| just heard about a formula shortage yesterday and b)only now
| heard that there was a food pathogen at the Abbott plant, and
| that recall is the principal cause.
|
| The NPR story yesterday made it sound like this was just supply
| chain issues. Not a single fucking word about a recall or
| contamination incident causing a plant shutdown.
|
| I'm guessing this is the result of the finest public relations
| money can buy?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| I'm certain there's some PR crap going on, but a shortage was
| building even before the recall (mid-feb).
|
| From https://datasembly.com/news/out-of-stock-rate-in-
| april-2022-... (referenced from
| https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/05/baby-formula-
| shortag...), we can see out of stock rates were already
| climbing to the 20-30% range in Feburary. It really ignites in
| April, as the recall affects products with expiry date after
| April 1 2022.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| It occurs to me that this might even date from last year.
|
| Their IT systems have been abysmal, last year I placed an
| order for one of their specialty products. They had replaced
| the IT system and not even ported over the account data, I
| had to set up a new account. Well, welcome to the modern age,
| on-line ordering is actually functional! However, I was
| limited to ordering one case. At the time I didn't think much
| of it, just figured it was applying some dollar limit to what
| a new customer could order. Earlier this year I found it was
| still only possible to buy one case and an error code was
| configured for trying to order more than one--no explanation.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| tons of people on twitter blaming biden for it
| black_13 wrote:
| ta988 wrote:
| Presidential blamers are always going to blame the one from
| the other side of the spectrum.
| pstuart wrote:
| Those people (and bots) will blame everything on Biden
| regardless of veracity.
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I'm wondering the same. National food shortage, has been
| happening for at least a week or more, and this is the first i
| hear that it is due to recall.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Well, if it helps, 4chan has been talking about this for at
| least a month, complete with maps of various food production
| facilities that have suffered fires or otherwise suddenly gone
| out of commission.
| pram wrote:
| On ZeroHedge for a while too :V
| ta988 wrote:
| I saw articles about that on news.google.com several months
| ago. Maybe the way they filter your feed?
| lghh wrote:
| I'm so worried about this. We are having our second child in a
| few months. Our first was on special (ie expensive) formula due
| to an intolerance. There's a good chance our second child will
| have the same intolerance. The only formula he could eat was the
| first pulled from the shelf. Breastfeeding isn't an option for
| us. No idea how he's going to eat if this is still going on
| (probably will be) and he has the intolerance (he probably will).
| Does he starve? I don't know.
| yyyk wrote:
| I can't know whether the medical situation allows this, but
| Human milk banks exist and provide service, e.g.:
|
| https://www.hmbana.org/
| h2odragon wrote:
| You can buy a goat in milk for $500 or so.
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Goat milk was the traditional* answer for intolerance to
| human milk. Infants typically don't do well with cow's milk.
|
| Goat and sheep cheeses are viable options for some adults who
| don't tolerate cheese from cow's milk.
|
| * as in "the go to answer before we had commercial baby
| formula."
| lghh wrote:
| Goat milk is probably the plan. I know I was a bit
| dramatic, my son won't starve. I can't support a goat where
| I live, but I'm close enough to places I can buy goat milk
| that I can make it work.
| bell-cot wrote:
| It's probably difficult ( _at best_ ) to arrange here &
| now...but my grandmother (in small town America, close to a
| century ago) served as wet nurse to a neighbor woman who was
| unable to feed her baby. I don't know what money or favors
| changed hand, but grandma was probably a touch higher in social
| status than the neighbor.
| lghh wrote:
| While not impossible, the person we'd buy milk from would
| also have to abstain from the things he would be intolerant
| too. No impossible, but it makes it trickier.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Also tricky - asking your donor to be tested for diseases
| which can be passed via breast milk. Such as AIDS...
| triyambakam wrote:
| My wife pumped milk for a baby whose teen Mom had run away.
| The grandmother of the baby paid my wife for it, too.
| [deleted]
| TimPC wrote:
| Republican who opposes funding the FDA complains they can't do
| their job quickly enough.
| refurb wrote:
| Wasn't Project Warp Speed a Republican idea?
|
| Hmmmm
| IX-103 wrote:
| Project Warp Speed was originally proposed by non-political
| civil servants and then approved by the Republican
| administration. It was one of several proposals to deal with
| the pandemic. Most of the others (such as a plan to provide
| masks for all Americans) were rejected, for better or worse.
|
| IMHO, the civil servants that do the work of government don't
| get enough credit. Without them, our elected officials
| wouldn't have options.
| ratsmack wrote:
| Aside from politics, there is a great deal of bloat and
| complacency in all government agencies. Just funneling more
| money to them does not make it better. If government agencies
| were run like a business, half of the staff would be laid off.
| mmastrac wrote:
| How do you run a consumer protection agency when shareholder
| value is the #1 concern? Genuinely curious.
| ratsmack wrote:
| Most companies are not "public" and are not beholden to the
| overly zealous profit driven mentality. Many private
| companies are very efficient and would be a good model for
| how a government agency should be run.
| human_person wrote:
| Efficiency isn't the goal of government. Serving everyone
| /every edge case is. A classic example is usps vs fedex. The
| postal service has to deliver to everyone. Not just people
| living in high density areas. Fedex can choose to only
| deliver to profitable areas or use the usps for delivering to
| more rural areas.
|
| Not to mention we don't actually want the govt working at
| maximum efficiency. That implies that in an emergency there
| isn't any slack left in the system to offer help where it is
| needed.
| peyton wrote:
| You're describing "universal service obligation." It's not
| a feature of all government services. You can get a
| landline at nearly any address from a private company.
| Whereas if you call the police, they can use discretion on
| whether to provide service.
| autoexec wrote:
| > You can get a landline at nearly any address from a
| private company. Whereas if you call the police, they can
| use discretion on whether to provide service.
|
| The availability of landlines to remote locations is in
| large part due to government subsidies. There are
| programs at both the state and the federal level to help
| offset the costs of providing services in areas that
| wouldn't otherwise be as profitable or indeed bring in
| any profit at all. If the government hadn't been helping
| to ease the burden on telecoms for providing those
| services we wouldn't see nearly as much copper being
| strung/buried/maintained in rural or difficult to reach
| locations.
|
| As for police, I think most everyone agrees that it's not
| an ideal situation to have areas too dangerous for police
| to effectively respond, but at a certain point it becomes
| a matter of safety. Private companies also won't deliver
| services in extremely dangerous neighborhoods and have a
| long history of using "discretion on whether to provide
| service" based on much less.
| grogenaut wrote:
| This title reads like the whistleblower caused the outbreak and
| is different than the actual title "Former employee blows whistle
| on baby formula production plant tied to outbreak" which I feel
| is more clear. The article talks about how slow the FDA was to
| react to a report about issues at the plant and many issues at
| the plant outlined in the report.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| First item for preventing cronobacter infections:
|
| _Breastfeeding. This is one of the best things that can do for
| the infant 's health, and benefits include preventing many kinds
| of infections. Reports Cronobacter infections among infants who
| were fed only breast milk and no formula or other foods are
| rare._
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infant_food_safety#Infection_p...
|
| I wonder how long we will continue with this whack-a-mole
| debugging of systems regulating systems regulating systems before
| people broadly realize that evolution has already done a damn
| fine job--one that is awfully hard to improve upon.
| triceratops wrote:
| My partner could literally not produce enough breast milk. She
| breastfed day and night, pumped constantly, took supplements,
| whatever it took. It just wasn't enough. I'm glad I'm not in
| the market for formula now; it seems like a terrible situation.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| Knowing what I now know about formula manufacturers[0], wet
| nurses & the breastmilk market seem like a better
| solution[1].
|
| [0] https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/nestle-
| baby...
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0qIupLeLAc
| treeman79 wrote:
| Was in same situation a dozen years ago. But we needed
| speciality formula. We learned the local shipping schedules
| for stores and would be there waiting as they rolling product
| off the truck.
|
| Was scary. When second child was same. Decided to adopt after
| that.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Perhaps the parental leave policies in the United States need
| to account for this, then? There's no social security net that
| will allow babies to be breastfed in the majority of all cases,
| so we shouldn't be surprised that parents choose formula.
| georgia_peach wrote:
| There was a time in this country when a single income was
| more than enough to comfortably support a family. Then we
| doubled the labor supply in the name of "liberation", the
| wages began to slip--precipitously--against inflation, and
| now just about everyone is a wage-slave of one variety or
| another.
|
| No amount of money-shuffling and bureaucracy will ever lift
| the punishment He has prescribed.
|
| _16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your
| pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to
| children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will
| rule over you."_
|
| _17 To Adam he said, "Because you listened to your wife and
| ate from the tree about which I commanded you, `You must not
| eat of it,' "Cursed is the ground because of you; through
| painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life._
|
| _18 It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you
| will eat the plants of the field._
|
| _19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until
| you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for
| dust you are and to dust you will return. "_
| mmastrac wrote:
| Are you using bible quotes to suggest that women should not
| be working?
| icegreentea2 wrote:
| Here's a copy of the referenced redacted complaint:
|
| https://www.marlerblog.com/files/2022/04/Redacted-Confidenti...
| shkkmo wrote:
| This title is confusingly ambiguous. Can we change it to the
| article heading: "Former employee blows whistle on baby formula
| production plant tied to outbreak"
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| There was no outbreak.
|
| There was a strain detected in the lab, and there are 2 dead
| infants. There was no match of strain type between ANY of them.
|
| No outbreak.
|
| If it was an outbreak you'd see the same strain in the lab, in
| the infants, and getting cultured from more sick babies. It
| isn't happening. Non-event.
| uoaei wrote:
| How do people find these gigs as shills, and how can it
| possibly pay high enough to spend your Saturday mornings on
| it?
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| There was no match between strains in the lab, dead infant #1, &
| dead infant #2
|
| So, they shut down the lab for nothing, rather than merely taking
| corrective action.
|
| This is beyond crazy and it is not good science.
| sofixa wrote:
| But there were _5_ other strains, of acceptable 0.
| OrvalWintermute wrote:
| If it was the same strain as genotyped, it would have been an
| outbreak.
|
| Considering that bacteria is everywhere, if it was an actual
| outbreak it would be the same strain.
|
| Now, there should be as little contamination as possible, but
| the reality is that levels of sterility always vary, and it
| is a certain amount of contaminants in PPM or PPB.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The plant doesn't have anything that matches and no
| contamination of the remaining formula was found, but we do
| seem to have a common point of contagion. This makes me
| think that perhaps what's really going on is the actual
| problem was not contamination of the formula, but
| contamination of the packaging coupled with imperfect
| handling.
| cameldrv wrote:
| "The FDA has found five strains of cronobacter at the Sturgis
| facility, but none match the outbreak strain. The discovery of
| the five types of cronobacter does however, suggest an ongoing
| problem at the facility and not just a single incident."
|
| This certainly doesn't look good, but as far as we know it didn't
| make anyone sick.
|
| Risk calibration by the government seems significantly off when
| contamination that doesn't make anyone sick causes a nationwide
| baby formula shortage, but any number of things that could
| mitigate covid, which is killing hundreds of people per day,
| aren't being done.
| legitster wrote:
| This reminds me of every food production facility I worked at.
| When I flipped burgers, some people went entire shifts doing fake
| temperature checks. When I worked at a processing plant, people
| would smoke and chew right on the line.
|
| Quality control is hard. I'm fully convinced you could have a
| "whistleblower" on any given facility in The world. And any
| perfection is an invitation to complacency.
| dv_dt wrote:
| While the one plant going down is a major problem, there are
| assessments that say we still make more than enough baby formula
| in the US, and that logistical issues (and regulatory capture and
| anti-trust issues) make the system slow to respond.
|
| https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/big-bottle-the-baby-formu...
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| The real problem is the specialty formulas. AFIAK they are the
| sole source for some types of products.
| mmastrac wrote:
| I think this is a key reminder of how important the American FDA,
| EPA and other consumer protection agencies are and how terrible
| it is for politicians to consider gutting or neutering them.
| missedthecue wrote:
| On the other hand, the FDA continues to block the import of
| European manufactured formula.
| chiph wrote:
| They also blocked the use of Thalidomide [0], which was
| available over the counter in Europe. They get a lot of
| credit for doing that, in my opinion.
|
| The important question is _why_ are they blocking European
| formula? Is there a nutrition deficit? Are there contaminants
| or is it adulterated? A failure to follow Good Manufacturing
| Processes? [1] Or is it just that approval is still in
| process?
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thalidomide_scandal
|
| [1] https://www.fda.gov/food/current-good-manufacturing-
| practice...
| SirensOfTitan wrote:
| The Thalidomide scandal occurred over 50 years ago--the FDA
| of that era is certainly not the same FDA of the modern
| era. Other federal agencies like the FAA have, in that time
| period, transformed from world leaders in advocation for
| safety to shells of their former selves peddling corporate
| interests.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| I bought all my baby formula imported from Austria. Fuck that
| shit, don't trust American companies. And with all this news,
| glad I made that decision.
|
| Highly unfortunate that their are families in the "greatest
| country in the world" who now have to literally scavenge for
| formula.
| refurb wrote:
| Huh? They've already issued multiple recalls for European
| formula too.
|
| How smug are you now?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/nov/23/foodanddrink
| literallyWTF wrote:
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| Someone has to do the blocking - reliable domestic food
| supply is a matter of national security.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| If you open the market, you'll get Americans products to be
| inspected by the EU, which is better at its job than the
| FDA.
| ta988 wrote:
| If you open the market now, wouldn't European countries
| struggle to get formula because US has a much higher
| buying capacity?
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Right but we're here because the domestic food supply is...
| Unreliable at the moment for baby formula. So we can't
| import European formula because we need to protect the
| domestic food supply for national security? Wtf?
| raverbashing wrote:
| Yes but apparently previous blockings were done by issues
| like minor labelling issues. Which of course have to be
| followed, but put a sticker on the bottle instead of block
| the import.
| whiddershins wrote:
| Counter example: Underwriters Lab.
| mmastrac wrote:
| Could you elaborate on this?
| CharlesW wrote:
| UL is not a consumer protection agency, but is one of several
| companies approved to perform safety testing by federal
| agencies. They do important work.
| [deleted]
| bingohbangoh wrote:
| There are many brands available in Europe that are not
| available here because the FDA drags it feet or otherwise
| prevents them selling here.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| baggy_trough wrote:
| Whether the FDA has contributed to a net saving or net loss of
| life is a very debatable question.
| mhb wrote:
| How Bad Government Policy is Fueling the Infant Formula
| Shortage
|
| https://reason.com/volokh/2022/05/13/how-bad-government-poli...
| azinman2 wrote:
| Not only is this pretty thin and not really recognizing the
| main issues aren't government-created, it's a libertarian rag
| trying to blame the government when private industry on their
| own puts out contaminated formula. If this isn't exactly the
| kind of problem that shows why a pure libertarian position
| can go wrong, I don't know what is.
| efitz wrote:
| > _not really recognizing the main issues aren 't
| government-created_
|
| Quote from the article:
|
| "Bad U.S. policy surely didn't cause the infant formula
| crisis, but it just as surely made the situation worse than
| it needed to be."
|
| Much of the article seems to be making the argument that
| the FDA is preventing importation of formula from other
| nations during the crisis because the FDA hasn't done all
| its bureaucratic work wrt certification of those sources.
| This seems a relevant point to raise when we're talking
| about food shortages for infants.
| alistairSH wrote:
| And why is the FDA preventing imports? From the article,
| because the dairy industry convinced the previous POTUS
| to do so. It's not like the FDA just decided out of thin
| air to ban Canadian formula - the decision was made
| higher up.
|
| Which isn't to say the current POTUS shouldn't tell them
| to relax that rule. They should. I'm objecting to laying
| so much blame on the FDA - our federal agencies are
| acting on laws and policies enacted by our politicians.
| petermcneeley wrote:
| There are other ways to deal with these kinds of issues:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/jan/22/china-baby-
| mil....
| jvanderbot wrote:
| why not both?
| rkk3 wrote:
| Until Covid hit I had a friend who would go stores in the
| USA, Buy baby formula at retail price and re-sell it on
| WeChat to wealthier people in China who she'd mail it to. She
| actually made a decent margin, because they really don't
| trust the manufactures there.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| I'm surprised it was worth shipping. I do understand,
| though--I have relatives over there and the majority of our
| baggage is always various things they have requested,
| mostly because they don't trust the local products.
| rkk3 wrote:
| > I'm surprised it was worth shipping
|
| I was as well. I don't know what the "Chinese Fedex"
| rate's were but maybe it's because most of the volume
| they move is from China -> US and the return trips are
| empty.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Seems like very different circumstances in the Chinese case.
| In that case, the condemned _knowingly_ mixed a _poison_ with
| milk intended for baby formula - IMO this crosses the line
| from negligence to murder.
|
| But I agree, even if you don't go all the way to the point of
| executing offenders, making more execs personally liable when
| there are gross cases of neglect would be an improvement.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Meanwhile, in the US, the FDA publishes a notice that is
| written by the company: https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-
| market-withdrawals-safety...
|
| Read through and carefully notice things like:
|
| > Cronobacter sakazakii is commonly found in the environment
| and a variety of areas in the home.
|
| > It's important to follow the instructions for proper
| preparation, handling and storage of powder formulas.
|
| ...and paragraphs of text explaining how they test for this
| stuff and found no evidence of contamination.
|
| It's also pretty infuriating that companies get to claim
| their recalls are "voluntary" when they're anything but. The
| agency comes to them, says "recall or we will" and the
| company gets to save face and call it voluntary and act like
| they're heroes.
|
| By the time the FDA is involved, _it 's because the company
| didn't act voluntarily when it had evidence of product
| contamination._
| y-c-o-m-b wrote:
| Yeah when it works as intended sure, but as far as I'm
| concerned, the FDA is another incompetent government
| organization motivated by playing politics. FWIW I do NOT want
| them gutted or neutered financially, but there's obviously some
| serious flaws in how they do things and I think that starts
| with holding people at the top of the organization accountable.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| _Thiel_ is unconvincing. The guy studied law and philosophy
| and is now a financier. He has no understanding at all about
| supply chains because he never encountered any and should not
| be let near them.
| rob_c wrote:
| andrew_ wrote:
| this is where our ideology conflicts with our needs. I'm a
| libertarian in many ways, but I'm not religious in adherence
| to the ideology, and see the need for the FDA and EPA. I'm
| also in favor of keeping their roles confined and reasonable.
| The voices of the extremes are too loud these days.
| rob_c wrote:
| Everyone thinks twitter represents buying bread at the
| shops. Eventually people will catch on. Give it 5years
| gzer0 wrote:
| What are the legal ramifications for this? Will anyone who
| willfully allowed for this to happen see jailtime? Will there be
| massive financial repercussions?
|
| The allegations are damning. Falsification of records, lying to
| auditors, releasing tainted batches... the list goes on. This is
| criminal. Unfortunately, no one will see jailtime, lawyers will
| settle out of court, and Abbott will continue it's bullshit ways.
| literallyWTF wrote:
| Only way any C-suite in america goes to jail is if their
| actions resulted in harm to a member of Congress or the rich.
|
| So...no. No way in hell anyone goes to jail.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| and if they threaten to harm more than just a couple, they
| end up committing suicide, while on suicide watch in jail,
| and so it happens that the CCTV was off or the data was
| deleted by mistake.
| modriano wrote:
| The lesson I've had to keep learning (at least over the past few
| years) is the value of "trust". I've been able to go into any
| supermarket and not have to think too much about the safety of
| each individual product because I've trusted a mixture of
|
| * capitalism (to leverage the profit motive to pressure companies
| to keep quality high enough that a competitor can't take their
| market share), * government (to fund centralized agencies that
| develop subject matter experts who act as OSS maintainers of
| vital public infrastructure and OSINT researchers who are
| authorized to explore a lot of ~~CSS~~ close sourced situations
| and enforce quality requirements for the American project), and *
| journalism (to listen for problems and sound the alarm when
| appropriate)
|
| to liberate myself from the need to evaluate the safety of each
| product. If even a small fraction of US consumers lost that trust
| and had to think about the safety of every product before putting
| it in their cart, it would shake up at least tens of billions of
| dollars of annual food spending (a ~$1.7 trillion per year
| sector), redirecting spending towards less processed foods. The
| added fear and decision fatigue could even cause consumers to
| simply end up buying less.
|
| Empirically, the capitalism mechanism works pretty well most of
| the time, but when it fails, ideally a government agency would be
| sufficiently empowered to A) accurately identify such situation
| and B) intervene in time to prevent harm to people or markets,
| but even there, there has to be some level of trust, because the
| cost of regulations strong enough to overcome the most skillfully
| engineered fraud would be paralyzing to productivity and starve
| consumers. In this case, the FDA was notified of the issues and
| audited but the facility's management was actively hostile to
| oversight and falsified records to conceal their dangerous
| failures. From here, there are two reasonable ways to proceed,
| and a sad and unreasonable way I fear we'll go:
|
| Reasonable way 1. Treat these deaths as negligent homicides, open
| very well resourced federal investigations into the situation,
| federally fund criminal prosecutions at whichever level is most
| painful (municipal or federal), pierce the corporate veil if
| there's even a whiff of C-level culpability, and generally make a
| loud and public example of the consequences for evading oversight
| through fraudulent means. Reasonable way 2. Significantly expand
| the resources available to federal agencies and rework incentive
| structures so that failures like this will taint involved
| bureaucrats (thereby impeding their career progression both
| within their agency and as a lobbyist). Politicians who starve
| agencies of resources or authority will also be held to account
| for the impacts of their actions in a sufficiently public way
| that it will stain their wikipedia page forever. Sad and
| unreasonable way: news coverage of this topic will focus on
| shortages, angry consumers, and Joe Biden's poll numbers, while
| coverage of the crimes at the root of the shortage go unmentioned
| in major reporting.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Food safety in processed foods in the USA is a major issue, and
| the fact is, preventing microbial contamination in the pipeline
| leading from raw ingredients to final product is an expensive
| proposition. To have any chance of catching problems before they
| hit the public, you really need an onsite QA lab capable of doing
| microbial contamination tests (and heavy metal contamination
| tests) at every step of the process.
|
| In-house labs are notoriously subject to corporate pressure to
| pass product through (consider the expense of having to toss an
| entire production run), and this leads to the promotion of those
| who don't back up production by waving red flags when product
| fails tests.
|
| One solution is aggressive testing and auditing by the FDA, i.e.
| swooping in and grabbing samples of product, but this is where
| political pressure to deregulate industries comes into play, and
| again, anyone at the FDA promoting this approach won't get
| promoted up the government ladder.
|
| Another solution might be legislation requiring independent
| accredited labs to be involved in the testing process, but again
| you can have massive problems here as the labs that pass
| questionable product are the ones who get their contracts
| renewed. It's probably the best option - but my advice is to just
| avoid highly processed foods as much as possible.
| ErikVandeWater wrote:
| What should be done is change laws around class action lawsuits
| so lawyers representing the public are incentivized to get
| higher payouts instead of settling early and taking a huge cut.
| That would solve a lot more problems without requiring an
| expanded role for a regulatory agency that is subject to
| regulatory capture.
| hedora wrote:
| Yeah; there should be a floor on settlements of statutory
| fines + 1.5x damages being paid out to each member of the
| class, with money set asside assuming 100% claim rate.
|
| Excess money would go to a relevant non-profit of a judge's
| choosing.
| nradov wrote:
| In most class action lawsuits, the actual damages are a
| total guess and almost impossible to quantify in any
| legally consistent manner. Pick a number.
| enragedcacti wrote:
| While I'm not opposed to changes to laws surrounding class
| action lawsuits, it seems inadvisable for a society's plan A
| to require waiting for babies to get poisoned or starve to
| death before it can take action.
|
| Of course you could argue that the threat of meaningful class
| action is a check against it happening in the first place,
| but profits from illegal activities are quarterly and the
| punishment will be a decade away. If anything is consistent
| in the US, its that we can't rely on enough executives to act
| morally or with long-term interests in mind when their
| compensation hinges on them not doing so.
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| In civil suits US courts really, _really_ want you to settle
| early.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Note that the strains found at the plant do not match
| anything that was found infecting babies. The probable
| consumer injury here is zero.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| A big problem is that many of the big class actions are on
| shaky ground and it's actually advantageous to settle rather
| than go through the motions and lose. After all, the company
| is offering you $100M not because they're wrong, but just to
| get you to go away. Why not take it rather than risk losing
| it all?
|
| Not all class actions are like that, but a lot are.
| efitz wrote:
| The United States desperately needs _loser pays_ [1] to
| make it worthwhile to fight frivolous lawsuits,
| particularly class actions.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_rule_%28attorney%
| 27s_f...
| alistairSH wrote:
| That would simply ensure that class actions almost
| completely cease to exist. And poor people (by which I
| mean anybody with less means than your average mega-corp)
| don't have access to civil remedies in the US.
| xyzzyz wrote:
| They would sure decrease in frequency (which is the whole
| point), but they would not disappear: if the legal case
| is good, the law companies would still take them on
| contingency. If the law company thinks their case is so
| weak that they might end up paying the defendant'a cost,
| _good_.
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| In addition to what alistairSH said, the US already has
| remedies for lawyer fees. If the judge feels your lawsuit
| is frivolous, they can award "fees" in addition to
| damages to the other party.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Which is an insanely high bar.
| [deleted]
| notreallyserio wrote:
| If you make the punishment for passing hazardous product high
| enough you could make a dent. Send the C-suite to jail if they
| cut enough corners that infants die -- you'll probably see a
| lot of improvements very quickly. Money fines won't be enough
| and are a complete waste of time and human life.
|
| It still won't be perfect, but we can't let the perfect be the
| enemy of the good.
| orzig wrote:
| someone says that after every scandal, and I'm open to it
| morally, but from an "actually improving compliance"
| standpoint: Is there any evidence it's true?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I'm not sure we've tried it or anything like it in the US.
| Intrinsic in this idea is the requirement that we actually
| enforce the rules, so when folks dismiss it as ineffective
| because it won't be enforced, I think they're missing the
| point.
|
| I'd bet on improvement if we enforced the law and actually
| sent people to jail.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| There's that bumper sticker: "I'll believe corporations are
| people when Texas executes one".
|
| I mean, I know that the lawyers and finance people would
| create such convoluted ownership structures that forcing a
| company out of existence and liquidating its assets would be
| meaningless, but apart from that detail, it has a certain
| appeal in the way many ideas that fit on a bumper sticker do.
| refurb wrote:
| It's a nice idea but nah.
|
| In pharmaceuticals, a executive needs to sign off, under
| penalties of imprisonment, if prices reported to the US
| government are incorrect.
|
| Fraud still happens and nobody goes to jail because hell ,
| people don't jail for more severe crimes so no court would
| impose the punishment.
| qiskit wrote:
| The largest fine in history was levied on pfizer. They paid
| a "criminal" fine. Nobody went to jail.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Business/pfizer-fined-23-billion-
| ille...
|
| Today pfizer is one of the most trusted companies and many
| people will be mad at you if you criticize pfizer in any
| way.
| autoexec wrote:
| > Today pfizer is one of the most trusted companies and
| many people will be mad at you if you criticize pfizer in
| any way.
|
| I don't buy that for a second. I see plenty of criticism
| of pfizer, for both what they've done before the pandemic
| and what they've done after it. This includes criticism
| from what many would consider "left-wing" sources.
| Whoever told you that they were beyond criticism lied to
| you, and you may want to reconsider trusting them in the
| future.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/feb/08/pfizer-
| covi...
|
| https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/01/13/after-year-
| vacc...
| incone123 wrote:
| China executed people for this years ago and I think public
| trust in the product has yet to recover
|
| http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8375638.stm
| wonnage wrote:
| Probably because it's like playing whack a mole, executing
| a few scapegoats isn't going to fix the lack of regulatory
| oversight
| supertrope wrote:
| And since real reform would likely require regime change,
| activists outraged over the latest problem (train
| derailment, buildings not meeting earthquake code due to
| fraud, etc) go to jail for disrupting social harmony.
| supertrope wrote:
| It's very rare for a corporate executive to even be charged
| let alone be convicted.
|
| https://www.cnn.com/2015/09/21/us/salmonella-peanut-exec-
| sen...
| autoexec wrote:
| Which is why corporations get away with murdering,
| poisoning, and polluting. Lack of accountability combined
| with the incentive of obscene profits pretty much makes it
| impossible for anything to change. Throw in outright
| bribery and regulatory capture and it doesn't look like
| anything will improve any time soon. I doubt I'll see it
| happening in my lifetime, and it's sad that not even the
| ongoing poisoning of babies for profit is enough to force
| the needed changes.
|
| I'll give congress some credit for being vocal about the
| problem at least. In a congressional report last year about
| the dangerous levels of heavy metals in baby foods they
| repeatedly concluded that the FDA's polices were "designed
| to be protective of baby food manufacturers" and they
| recommended more regulation, but still, I haven't seen any
| action that would address the underlying issues that allow
| a regulatory body to prioritize the profits of industry
| over the health and safety of the population.
|
| If you're curious, that report can be read here: https://ov
| ersight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight.house....
|
| There was also a follow up report on the issue you can read
| here: https://oversight.house.gov/sites/democrats.oversight
| .house....
| vkou wrote:
| You often don't get to be a c-executive without having a
| major appetite for risk-taking.
|
| Short of shooting both the c-suite, and their families, I
| don't think this will align their interests with those of the
| public as well as you hope.
| shiftpgdn wrote:
| You would be surprised at how many people are on board with
| that level of punishment in the USA.
| efitz wrote:
| _pour encourager les autres_
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| _you 'll probably see a lot of improvements very quickly_
|
| More likely: people stop making baby formula entirely and
| women have no choice but to breastfeed, which is a problem if
| baby is lactose intolerant, among other things.
| seo-speedwagon wrote:
| Even if we buy your premise that actually putting teeth
| behind food safety regulations would cause a capital
| strike, that just provides opportunity for others to step
| in and fill the gap. Like your post alludes to there is a
| large and stable demand for safe formula. The problem is
| right now one company owns a majority of the market share
| thanks to the poor way the existing govt reimbursement
| program is structured
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Temple Grandin is extremely influential in some spaces. I
| think she has probably designed like half the beef
| processing plants in the US.
|
| She wrote up a set of safety guidelines for the beef
| industry and McDonald's adopted her recommendations. You
| couldn't sell beef to McDonald's without following her
| guideline.
|
| McDonald's buys so much beef, this became the de facto
| industry standard.
|
| You can't put a gun to someone's head and force them to
| love you. You can't get blood from a turnip. And
| draconian measures generally fail to get real results.
|
| Carrots and stick sometimes work. But "the beatings shall
| continue until morale improves" is generally
| counterproductive. It doesn't supply the necessary
| competence for setting a higher standard and usually
| actively disincentivizes trying to solve the problem.
| tomp wrote:
| this comment makes no sense.
|
| You're at the same time arguing "meat producers had to
| adapt to external guidelines to be able to continue
| selling their products"
|
| and "government imposing external guidelines for
| producers to be able to continue selling their products
| would be inefficient".
|
| Or am I misunderstanding your point?
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Temple Grandin supplied a superior solution. A very
| influential company adopted it because it works better.
| They voted with their dollars. No one was told "You will
| go to jail."
|
| She provided a better method. Market forces took care of
| the rest.
|
| A gun to someone's head doesn't magically make them
| capable of coming up with better solutions.
| tehwebguy wrote:
| What does the market having a standard higher than the
| legal minimum have to do the law enforcing a minimum?
|
| In your example, for instance, even if the law said
| Ronald McDonald would face the firing squad if their beef
| didn't meet the legal minimum standard it wouldn't matter
| because they are already exceeding it. The stick is not
| causing the carrot any trouble.
| [deleted]
| rsync wrote:
| "You can't put a gun to someone's head and force them to
| love you. You can't get blood from a turnip. And
| draconian measures generally fail to get real results."
|
| I might be willing to stipulate the above. However there
| is a different mechanism at work when actors in the
| system _have skin in the game_.
|
| And so, I will see your Temple Grandin (who I admire) and
| raise you a Nassim Nicholas Taleb.
|
| Specifically: these producers need to be feeding their
| own children and raising their own families with these
| very same products.
|
| Ironically, wealthy-global-north consumers (like foodco
| CEOs) are almost certainly not consumers of infant
| formula[1] (or lunchables or scent sprays or Monster
| drinks) so it is difficult to establish "skin in the
| game".
|
| ... and therein lies _a tremendous amount of
| information_. It should give consumers pause to learn
| that these products are not used - and likely disdained -
| by the stakeholders that produce them.[2][3]
|
| [1] https://qz.com/1034016/the-class-dynamics-of-
| breastfeeding-i...
|
| [2]
| http://www.freebooks8.com/Fiction_Library/3308/37.html
|
| [3] "I don't think my kids have ever eaten a Lunchable,"
| she told me. "They know they exist and that Grandpa Bob
| invented them. _But we eat very healthfully_."
| dpierce9 wrote:
| If you need baby formula you can't avoid baby formula. Not all
| mothers can or want to breast feed. Mothers are not always
| available when babies need to be fed. Any supply chain for
| secondary breast milk is going to have similar contamination
| and cold chain management issues.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| > Not all mothers can or want to breast feed.
|
| Those that don't want to should probably reconsider having
| kids.
|
| > Mothers are not always available when babies need to be
| fed.
|
| This is why pumps exist. No problem.
|
| > Any supply chain for secondary breast milk is going to have
| similar contamination and cold chain management issues.
|
| It's often frozen.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Those are pretty naive and shortsighted views. Some women
| simply can't breastfeed, and don't discover that until the
| baby is born. Milk doesn't always come in, feeding can be
| painful, etc.
|
| Some babies are orphans. You gonna pump a corpse? Or force
| the child on some other new mother?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| You apparently didn't notice that I didn't address
| "can't", and the reason I didn't is because it's
| absolutely a valid reason to feed formula.
| dpierce9 wrote:
| Not wanting to breastfeed is also a good reason. First,
| breastfeeding and/or pumping is a lot of work. Second, it
| can be painful for a number of reasons (latching,
| chafing, engorgement). Third, women have jobs and the US
| has horrendous parental leave policies. It can be nearly
| impossible to breastfeed/pump AND do your job. Fourth, it
| isn't your kid so it isn't your choice how to feed them.
| If you want to breastfeed your kids that is fine. Many
| women do hybrid. Some don't do any breast milk.
|
| You have provided no good reasons to think your position
| on this is correct and you have said a number of other
| things which are just reprehensible. I am only responding
| because I hope you will see this.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| The WHO has weighed in on this topic, and their
| recommendations are well known. "Breast is best" is not
| just a trite cliche, but supported by science and
| worldwide medical authorities. I'll leave the research to
| you.
| seo-speedwagon wrote:
| > Those that don't want to should probably reconsider
| having kids.
|
| Buddy I got some news for you r.e. the availability of that
| option
| dpierce9 wrote:
| When I say mothers are not always available that was a
| polite way of saying mothers sometimes die during
| childbirth. A gross number in America but childbirth is
| dangerous even in the best circumstances. It is a leading
| cause of death among young women in the US.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| You realize not all women *can* breastfeed? And they don't
| always know it when they decide to have a kid.
|
| And some babies need the special formulas. And some non-
| babies need the special formulas.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| I didn't say anything against "can't" for precisely that
| reason; it's absolutely a valid reason to feed formula.
| leaflets2 wrote:
| Agree,
|
| And I wonder, how does it matter if the milk is frozen?
| (Can't they put it in the micro? I guess I'm
| misunderstanding something)
| Throwawayaerlei wrote:
| "> Not all mothers can or want to breast feed.
|
| Those that don't want to should probably reconsider having
| kids."
|
| How well does that work for their first baby if it's some
| unanticipated problem the mother has??
|
| Modern civilization starting with agriculture is also a
| repudiation of the "survival of the fittest" philosophy
| you're pushing.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Problems are not a lack of desire. I didn't address
| "can't" for exactly that reason: if you tried and it
| didn't work out, then of course it's a valid reason to
| feed formula.
| captainmuon wrote:
| I never understand how people in large companies would be
| motivated do anything immoral or against the law. If you are an
| individual entrepreneur and stand to gain something from it,
| sure. But if you are just a cog in the machine, you just work
| strictly to contract and regulation, and don't go out of your
| way to do something illegal just to help the company. That
| would not just be against my self interest, but in fact against
| my whole professional ethos.
|
| It is really surprizing that stakeholders manage to create that
| kind of pressure in corporations. Maybe what is needed are much
| stonger labour laws, so that if you actually stand up to your
| boss, they cannot just fire you the next day.
| tomp wrote:
| In large companies it's much easier.
|
| As an individual entrepreneur, you're the sole decision maker
| and responsible for everything.
|
| In a large company, you can always blame someone else, your
| boss, your employee, the HR guidelines, the unclear safety
| guidelines, the shareholders, boss implied you should ignore
| the law, ... there's often conflicting formal (e.g.
| "compliance training") and informal (e.g.
| promotion/commission) incentives as well.
| Manuel_D wrote:
| I wonder if gamma rays could help this. It kills germs without
| affecting the nutrition of the food (as opposed to heat, which
| often does break down nutrients).
| undersuit wrote:
| You have to figure out where to best use the radiation.
| Example: gamma rays would kill Clostridium botulinum but not
| detoxify the botulinum toxin.
| madengr wrote:
| nradov wrote:
| I generally agree, but there have also been many incidents of
| bacterial contamination from unprocessed foods like lettuce.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/foodsafety/communication/leafy-greens.ht...
| chaosbutters314 wrote:
| uh no. I'm a food engineer for one of the largest manufacturers
| in America and there isn't any pressure from corporate to just
| pass lines that might be dangerous.
|
| the problem is in testing and just how statistically unfeasible
| it is. case in point, we had a line that passed every QA test
| but we would still get back 1 product every now and then from a
| customer with spoilage. we'd test thousands of samples each
| year and they're all fine but still something was the problem.
| on top of that, we had "nearly identical" lines that never had
| any problem.
|
| luckily we found the problem in the line and how to push the
| failures alway the way down to zero for little cost instead of
| corporate wanting to pay $10 million to fix it.
|
| so no, corporate isn't some boogy man.
| TimPC wrote:
| This assumes you even try. The US allows for relatively large
| amount of some heavy metals in baby formula and as a result
| parents have to be especially careful about certain brands with
| high heavy metal content.
| recursive wrote:
| I finished the formula years recently. I had never heard of
| this. I'm assuming I fed my kids some heavy metal. Do you
| have a source for this?
| beamatronic wrote:
| https://www.consumerreports.org/food-safety/heavy-metals-
| in-...
| ALittleLight wrote:
| I'm not seeing baby formula in this document. I do see
| baby foods.
| phdelightful wrote:
| The word "formula" doesn't appear in the article you
| linked. It seems to be about other baby foods.
| Victerius wrote:
| Making babies listen to heavy metal, on the other hand...
| wombatpm wrote:
| See https://www.rockabyebabymusic.com/
|
| Got me through the late nights with two kids
| tremon wrote:
| _Another solution might be legislation requiring independent
| accredited labs to be involved in the testing process, but
| again you can have massive problems here as the labs that pass
| questionable product are the ones who get their contracts
| renewed._
|
| Here's a suggestion: companies are allowed to use in-house
| testing, but as soon as defective/substandard products are
| found in the market, the company loses its in-house testing
| license and must have its products validated by external
| agencies. Only after X number of years/batches/volume of fault-
| free product can a company request to reinstate its in-house
| testing license.
|
| And those external agencies may charge whatever they want, of
| course. And if a competitor finds a fault in an agency's
| testing procedures, they win said agency's existing contracts.
|
| That model creates all the adversarial business relations that
| small-government aficionados seem to salivate over, I think.
| rob_c wrote:
| and people wonder where conspiracy theories come from...
|
| please stop being horrible people and own up to mistakes, we all
| make them.
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