AgLA06 said:Texas12&0 said:AgLA06 said:
Ok. This can be great for the average person not in a city.
So now the real question. How do you do this without losing oversite to health and safety. Because I don't think the average person on here understands what inspected facilities have to go through in time, cost, and requirements.
Simple answer is education for the cattle ranchers. If they want to stay in business they will produce quality meat. If they sell to a retailer, like HEB, then the burden shifts to HEB that they are reselling quality meat. Don't need a bunch of government employees looking over everyone's shoulder and adding regulation. If you want to stay in business, ranchers and supermarkets, you do your due diligence. That's the beauty of capitalism. You protect your livelihood and compete at the highest level.
This is niave at best. I hope. See the post above about reality of the food industry and inspection requirements.
We absolutly need goverment oversite to ensure an even playing field across facilities and verification of safe food handling pracitices. And we especially need the ability to trace evertying accordingly when the inevitable issue (mad cow, bacterial contamination, foreign objects incorproated, etc.) recalls or health outbrakes happen.
Like most posts on this board 97% of the people typing have little to no undestanding of the topic. Outside of co-ops popping up that will still have to abide by inspection and health guidelines and the incurred costs (in inspectors, QA personnel, equipment, and facility cleaning, etc.) it most likely won't change much, if anything in pricing to consumers.
Where it could change something is attempting to break pricing controls of the big houses. But in the end like most similar attempts of deregulation, it just allows others to participate at the same higher pricing (if they can find the financing to play).
I'm in the food commodity industry and ***** regularly about the costs, impacts, and general PITA the various certification and inspections requirements impact all kinds of products. But they are there for a reason.
We really don't though.
Last I checked, even if a cut of beef has a USDA inspected stamp on it and you end up getting sick because it had something wrong with it, the USDA tells you they are really sorry and that's just about it. You as a consumer have zero recourse. And for all the "government inspection is the greatest thing ever!!!!" - how many thousands of pounds of meat, vegetables, etc. been recalled because after the fact it was discovered that it was contaminated? Even though it was inspected.
Do I think it's a good idea to have inspection? Most of the time I do. Where I think it has the most value is the back tracing ability - but that is a reactive component, not a proactive one. But I don't look at it as some magic bullet that fixes everything and certainly don't think it is an absolute requirement. Man made it a long, long time before the idea that somebody working for a government agency needed to inspect food.
