USDA love driving out packers

As news comes today that the U.S. Deparment of Agriculture (USDA) and Nebraska Beef LLC have widened the ground beef recall from 500,000 pounds (see blog below) to 5.3 million pounds, one can only conclude that USDA relishes driving packers out of business.

This is the third one this year (although no word had been received at press time about the status of Nebraska Beef LLC), the others in California and New York. Think about it--there is little excuse for USDA not to do their inspections and enforcements in such a way that the problem at a meat plant is corrected long before a public recall of 5.3 million pounds is needed.

One can only conclude that USDA is out to get Nebraska Beef, by letting things get that far out of hand. Packers by law must pay cash for the cattle they slaughter on the front end, then pay the employees, utilities, interest cost, etc., and only then have beef to sell, which is shipped and billed out typically on 30-day terms.

A recall means all the money was paid out, with little or no revenue received. When you add the shipping costs of getting the meat back, all the extra accouting and paperwork in proving you got it back, and then destroying the meat, plus pay a hefty fine from USDA--it almost always drives a packer out of business.

If this were a life or death matter for the consumer, (which it isn't, as explained below) that might be justifiable. Short of that, USDA should have found the problems in its inspections, talked to the packer for corrections in private and if a recall was then found to be justified, do it before it got 5.3 million pounds out of control.

This way, it is USDA that is endangering the public health, not the meat packer.