<p>The peanut butter contamination is really scary. We spend hundreds of billions every year externally to preserve our safety. We spend many billions every year to take off our shoes.
Yet we can’t seem to spend single billion to help insure the nation’s food supply. Somewhere there is a moral and ethics problem in the US. Dangerous contaminates in food, should result in the immediate shutdown of a food processing facility until the safety of the food is insured. </p>
<p>A lot of people of authority Screwed-up. We luckily only got a flesh wound, only six deaths and hundreds ill. It could have been thousands dead. Terrorists home grown.</p>
<p>"This scene is, perhaps, the best-known of the entire film. Arguably the most famous line of the scene, “It’s just a flesh wound!”, has since become an expression used by someone who ignores a fatal flaw or problem, either out of optimism or stubbornness.</p>
<p>A friend of mine develops rapid tests for detecting nasty bacteria in foods. It is an uphill battle, she says. There is a lot of lobbying against food testing, and I’m not surprised (if, according to the series of articles in the Seattle Times, our hospitals sweep MRSA and C. Difficile problems under the rug, the food industries can do even worse!). There are many things the government has to stay out of, but this is where the government has to step in, IMO, just like in the case of hospitals unwilling to take care of the HAI. You can’t let the foxes guard the henhouse.</p>
<p>In the absence of government regulation, bad business drives out good business.</p>
<p>When it is possible for people to cheat and make money, someone always, always steps forward and does so. Then they excuse the danger to the public as “risk taking” for cost control.</p>
<p>Thank the Republican regulatory environment for the deadly peanut butter. Expect a Wall Street Journal article exonerating the peanut corporation soon.</p>
<p>WA Legislature is now reviewing a bill that would require all hospitals to report their MRSA rates, and another bill allowing surprise inspections of hospitals. CA and some other states already have similar laws.</p>
<p>And probably a bonus, supplied by the American taxpayer (after all, this bad publicity might make the peanut butter company go under, and they will request a bailout, and then use the funds to pay their execs bonuses).</p>
<p>The food industry has pushed unhealthy food at us for decades. The almighty dollar is much more important than our health or safety.</p>