USDA bills Hallmark for ground beef

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has billed the Hallmark packing company some $57 million for the ground beef it purchased for the school lunch program, and then recalled. Not to use too bad an aphorism to describe USDA's chances of collection, but, fat chance.

They gave Hallmark until mid-May to pay up, or turn it over to the U.S. Justice Department for collection. This is a textbook example of what they created the bankruptcy laws for. It will be, as they say, a race to the court house.

What we're really witnessing is what happens when you have nannyistic Democrats in charge of congressional committees. USDA's gross over-reaction on the questionable Hallmark case ranks right up there with the unconscionable inconvenience put on the travelling public with the huge, immediate inspections of airplanes by American and Southwest.

There was no immediate danger to the flying public in either the American or Southwest cases. The inspections could have been carried out on an orderly plane by plane basis, as there was no danger to the flying public, stranding no one. But the FAA bureaucrats were afraid to face the headline-grabbing congressional committees, panicked, and left the flying public stranded for no good reason.

USDA bought and paid for the ground beef, and chose not to use it. The packer's unions were turning up the heat on congressional investigators, so USDA, rather than have to answer to congressional tyrants seeking re-election publicity, recalled the ground beef. The whole Hallmark flap is probably a union set-up, in conjunction with the vegetarian, animal rights radicals in PETA and HSUS.

It's bad enough that USDA has probably already put Hallmark out of business, with their failure to defend their own meat inspectors. Now they seek to rub salt in the wound by seeking to collect for the beef they chose not to use. There is no evidence, by USDA's own admission, that there is anything wrong with the Hallmark ground beef.

All I can say for Hallmark is: God help you if you get in a union dispute, and the unionized federal bureaucrats choose to put in with the union, rather than defend their own department.

What an outrage!