[HN Gopher] Blood puddles, mold, tainted meat, bugs: Boar's Head...
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Blood puddles, mold, tainted meat, bugs: Boar's Head inspections
are horrifying
Author : speckx
Score : 52 points
Date : 2024-08-30 19:56 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| neilv wrote:
| > _For instance, on June 10, an inspector entered the "pickle vat
| pump room" and noted "heavy meat buildup" on the walls, which
| were also crawling with flies and gnats._
|
| I haven't seen much upside from going vegetarian, but at least I
| don't have to worry about accidentally eating food from a place
| like the above.
| ta988 wrote:
| They also do cheese (vegetarian, no animal rennet), various
| sauces, pickles...
| beloch wrote:
| They scrape the floors at places like this to make blood meal
| (i.e. organic fertlizer).
| kjksf wrote:
| > According to the CDC, one significant outbreak in 2020 was
| linked to onions, resulting in around 1,127 reported cases of
| Salmonella across 48 states.
|
| Vegetables can also be contaminated with bad bacteria and they
| do get contaminated in practice.
|
| There are plenty outbreaks caused by contaminated salads and
| other vegetables.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| The meat buildup I can deal with, but the flies are such a
| nuisance.
| cyberax wrote:
| The most dangerous product in a typical kitchen is lettuce. Bon
| appetit.
| AndrewKemendo wrote:
| The consistency of widespread foodborne illnesses coming from
| vegetables is unmatched
|
| Your horror is an artifact of the industrialization of food
| production not the fact of meat at a food
|
| These insane practices aren't happening with pastoral nomadic
| herders or even pasture raised farms in the US
| inferiorhuman wrote:
| Do you like potatoes and strawberries? Welp. One of the
| pesticides California's green lit is also used to stimulate
| tumor growth in animals. Presumably not much is left on the
| food itself (although strawberries make great chemical
| sponges), but Dichloropropene is definitely a problem in the
| communities surrounding the farms.
|
| Like cheap wine? Things haven't gotten much better from
| Chavez's days especially if you look at the cheaper brands like
| Charles Shaw. Plenty of young, dead, farm workers because
| safety standards are barely enforced.
|
| Are you just worried about pathogens? Cantaloupes were the main
| vector in the 2011 listeria outbreak in the US and 2018
| listeria outbreak in Australia, and a salmonella outbreak this
| year in the US. The 2008 salmonella outbreak in the US was the
| largest since the 80s, and that was spread by cilantro and
| peppers.
|
| 2009 saw a big salmonella outbreak in the US spread by peanut
| products. If you're worried about unsanitary factory
| conditions, you probably don't want to read up on that.
|
| Big ag is _gross_ whether it 's plant or animal.
| sandspar wrote:
| It sounds horrifying but it's hard to tell how much more
| horrifying it is than the average meat processing plant. They're
| big, complex, dirty facilities at the best of times. I've never
| seen the inside of a meat processing plant. Presumably the
| journalist hasn't either. The situation is bad, yes (69
| violations in a year). But I don't know exactly how bad. Overall
| I'm thankful for the guys who work in these places so that the
| rest of us can keep our eyes averted from death.
| CharlieDigital wrote:
| > Overall I'm thankful for the guys who work in these places so
| that the rest of us can keep our eyes averted from death.
|
| _That 's_ what your focused on? Not the contamination and
| listeria? > The situation is bad, yes (69
| violations in a year). But I don't know exactly how bad.
|
| 9 people dead so far. So yeah, it's bad.
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/death-toll-now-8-lis...
| tptacek wrote:
| I caught the subtext as "how bad those violations were in
| relation to the industry" and don't think anyone has cast any
| doubt on how bad a listeria outbreak is.
| colechristensen wrote:
| No. Food production is clean, must be clean, and if it is not
| clean it is not just incompetence it is criminal.
|
| The inspectors and regulatory agencies failed to do their jobs
| and people died.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| What about the actual packer? Why do we not hold them
| responsible here too? It's all well and good to blame the
| USDA but they're a check on the packer. It seems like Boar's
| Head has a cavalier attitude toward product safety that was
| bound to get a bunch of people killed sooner or later. I
| realize that this is the norm in these facilities so why do
| we do nothing to actually regulate them? And why is the focus
| on how the USDA isn't doing it's job? Clearly the problems
| are being identified but the actual regulations have no
| teeth.
| pessimizer wrote:
| > It sounds horrifying but it's hard to tell how much more
| horrifying it is than the average meat processing plant.
| They're big, complex, dirty facilities at the best of times.
| I've never seen the inside of a meat processing plant.
|
| How do you say that they're big, complex, dirty facilities at
| the best of times, then immediately say you haven't ever seen
| inside one?
|
| > Presumably the journalist hasn't either.
|
| Why would you presume this? Do you presume the inspectors
| aren't familiar with meat processing either?
|
| > Overall I'm thankful for the guys who work in these places so
| that the rest of us can keep our eyes averted from death.
|
| Just random praise for the company that is getting busted for
| horrific health violations. Do you have any praise for the
| facilities that aren't crawling with vermin and filth?
| tptacek wrote:
| He said he's thankful for "the guys who work in these
| plants", which is not the same thing as being thankful for
| the companies that operate them or their policies. Being
| thankful for rank-and-file meat processing employees doesn't
| seem like a crazy sentiment. It's a very tough job.
| m4tthumphrey wrote:
| Man, I love being a vegetarian.
| fsckboy wrote:
| listeria spreads thrives/spreads through sprouts and melons,
| among other foods including milk and meats.
| mrbonner wrote:
| We can go back to read the Jungle by Upton now. Something never
| changes.
| tptacek wrote:
| I mean, The Jungle is fiction.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Sort of
| tptacek wrote:
| It's like The Wire of meat packing.
| kasey_junk wrote:
| Where's Ona, Phil? Where's Ona?
| BuckYeah wrote:
| Ha! The age old vegetarian/vegan joke is too real
| hanniabu wrote:
| Can't say I'm surprised given the company
| tptacek wrote:
| I'm sure it's bad, but the article isn't providing (unless I
| missed it) the crucial bit of information needed to evaluate this
| story, which is how these inspection results depart from the
| norm, which may also frequently be gnarly (agriculture is gnarly
| and gets gnarlier as it scales), but has not repeatedly generated
| listeria outbreaks.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| We shouldn't necessarily focus on the norm but rather on what
| we would like to see in these facilities to ensure the safety
| of the people consuming these products. One of the stories my
| wife's OB told her about consuming uncooked lunch meat was
| about a case where a pregnant woman ate some lunch meat that
| was contaminated with listeria, and the resulting infection was
| so severe that some of her limbs had to be amputated. So we
| probably shouldn't tolerate this norm.
| tptacek wrote:
| So that might be true --- is almost certainly true --- but
| that's an argument you'd ideally be making from the full set
| of facts (or independent of the facts, as an ideal). It's not
| an evaluation of the journalism or analysis itself, which
| deserves, for its own reasons, to be taken seriously.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Pregnant women are immune compromised and should be avoiding
| lunch meat
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Can always cook it. Listeria is very sensitive to heat (and
| doesn't produce toxins that cooking doesn't protect you
| from).
| hansvm wrote:
| All the small-scale meat packers (not a representative sample)
| I've purchased from were sterile before they closed before the
| day and not very untidy during the process. We've kept a
| similar attitude ourselves when butchering deer, cows, pigs,
| moose, .... It's just not that hard to keep things clean.
|
| A single fly getting in isn't the end of the world, but an
| environment with a lot of flies indicates something horribly
| wrong (no protection from the outside, or maggots and an
| environment inside otherwise conducive to the production of
| flies).
|
| You're right that it gets gnarlier as it scales, but as it
| scales you can also afford to build rooms designed to be
| pressure-washed without moving the equipment. It's even cheaper
| and easier per unit of meat to wash a room that way than to
| hand-wash the damned thing.
|
| Maybe that's the norm, and maybe the listeria outbreak is for
| other reasons, but the conditions described are bad regardless
| of how commonplace they are or how much they contributed to
| those deaths.
| tptacek wrote:
| Absolutely. I would strongly prefer sterile meat processing
| facilities with rigorous HACCP plans. I'm also aware though
| that meat processing has consolidated pretty dramatically
| over the last 20 years, to the point where most meat sourced
| from Illinois livestock is processed in a single plant.
|
| Two important things I think I'd want to know:
|
| * How variable the mapping is from these kinds of inspection
| results to pathogen outbreaks in packaged product
|
| * How common these kinds of inspection results are industry-
| wide
| nikolay wrote:
| Let's not forget the constant E. coli and Salmonella cases of
| food poisoning on veggies, so, vegans, please, don't even start
| this! As an omnivore, I've always stayed off Boar's Head, because
| they were questionable even 20 years ago, when I first saw there
| stuff at Persian stores in Orange County, California!
| ProfessorLayton wrote:
| I mean I'm not trying to flamebate but isn't e. coli still
| connected to meat from the manure used to fertilize plants?
| beloch wrote:
| "We are conducting an extensive investigation, working closely
| with the USDA and government regulatory agencies, as well as with
| the industry's leading food safety experts, to determine how our
| liverwurst produced at our Jarratt, Virginia facility was
| adulterated and to prevent it from happening again..."
|
| It's pretty clear the failure was with management. They didn't
| enforce basic standards of cleanliness. If the whole company
| isn't shut down, their facilities should be inspected
| _frequently_ to ensure they are compliant with health
| regulations.
| VHRanger wrote:
| I mean, the violations should result in some form of shutting
| down the facility until it's resolved.
|
| Without consequences, all those inspections do nothing
| metadat wrote:
| As mentioned in TFA, the Boars Head Virginia plant has been
| shut down since the inspection issues in July.
|
| It's crazy there aren't at least annual inspections of food
| production facilities which would have unearthed the
| disgusting lack of care sooner. They market themselves as a
| premium brand, which makes this look even worse.
| grugagag wrote:
| I've seen once how commercial cold cuts are being produced. I
| never want to try those again, it's absolutley nauseating.
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