09.22.10
Eat Shit Farms, LLC: More Dickensian character
Today’s Associated Press piece on the salmonella and the massive egg recall has everything you need to know about more US failure on the way.
The complaining politician, who is shocked — just shocked, is Bart Stupak, the outgoing Democratic Party caveman from Michigan who held up healthcare reform for vanity’s sake.
From AP’s lede grafs:
The chairman of a House subcommittee says a recent outbreak of salmonella in eggs paints, in his words, “a very disturbing picture of egg production in America.”
During a hearing Wednesday, Democratic Rep. Bart Stupak of Michigan showed photos of dead chickens, bugs and holes in hen houses at Iowa egg farms linked to the outbreak.
Consider that for a moment, the inconsequential fellow known only because he was a famous nuisance, Bart Stupak, heading a House inquiry into mass salmonellosis.
It’s a joke.
Austin “Jack” DeCoster, the Dickensian owner of Eat Shit Farms Wright County Egg also makes an appearance. He claims to be upset that he’s implicated in so much illness. At least until he’s out of this jam.
It is reported:
The owner of an Iowa egg company says in testimony prepared for a House hearing that he was “horrified” to learn that his eggs may have sickened as many as 1,600 people in an outbreak of salmonella poisoning this summer.
Austin “Jack” DeCoster and his son, Peter DeCoster, are scheduled to testify before a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee Wednesday. The panel has asked them to come prepared to explain what steps they have taken to address salmonella contamination found at their farms.
In testimony released by the company, Wright County Egg, the two men say they believe an ingredient sold to them by an outside supplier may be to blame for the outbreak.
Someone else’s fault. The eight-foot-high piles of manure in the egg-laying operation.
I’ve said it before. Currently, the US system is broken.
The Dickensian character afoot in US agribusiness is a greater menace to the general welfare than any ginned up scenario dreamt of re bioterrorism.
The US government cannot now, and even will not, get these people off the street. That the DeCosters can show up to be questioned by the likes of a Bart Stupak in a Congressional inquiry is all the evidence one needs.
The next sentence is particularly laughable:
Peter DeCoster, CEO of Wright, said the company has made “sweeping biosecurity and food safety changes” following the recall …
At the beginning of the summer, the people who ran Wright County Egg in Iowa probably didn’t know and/or care what the word biosecurity meant.
Not that it matters. Biosecurity — in real world practice — is just a word coined and used to justify transfer of taxpayer money to the American bioterror defense private sector.
This, a quote from the Washington Post, in my original post on Eat Shit Farms, which has now been downloaded a couple thousand times (It’s the top read on the blog since it went up):
Federal investigators found piles of manure up to eight feet tall, live mice, pigeons and other birds inside the hen houses at two egg farms suspected of causing a nationwide outbreak of salmonella illness, officials said Monday.
How do you biosecuritize a mass egg farm where it was business to have piles of manure taller than the boss inside the hen house?
The Associated Press also mentions some eyewash about chickens now being vaccinated against Salmonella at Eat Shit Farms, a practice DD noted in news from the Los Angeles Times, that has been avoided nationwide. Because it added a few pennies to the cost.
“I pray several times each day for all [those made ill]and for their improved health,” wrote Austin Decoster in prepared testimony, reported AP.
Around 1,600 have now been diagnosed in the outbreak.
“For every case reported, there may be 30 that are unreported,” concludes the AP.