Tell the USDA: Make our Meat Safe!

Tell the USDA: Make our Meat Safe!

This is insane.

The Trump administration will soon let the pork industry take over inspecting its own meat at industrial-scale hog factory farms! This includes all tests for deadly pathogens – like salmonella – that sicken more than half a million Americans a year and send 3,000 people to the hospital.

And, as The Washington Post recently reported, the Trump administration is considering giving the beef industry the same deal! We can’t let that happen.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates nearly 640,000 Americans are sickened each year by contaminated beef products, 3,000 wind up in the hospital and 55 die. And that is with independent federal food inspectors in place at beef processing plants!

We shudder to think how many more will get sick or worse if industry lackeys, not trained government veterinarians, are the last line of defense against a pathogen outbreak.

The federal government should be fighting to make our food safer, not to make the meat industry richer. Tell the Trump Department of Agriculture to put public health WAY ahead of the meat industry’s profits and reverse these dangerous policies!

Add your name and stand with EWG and Daily Kos as we urge the USDA and White House to protect Americans from foodborne illnesses!

Public health should come WAY ahead of meat industry profits. The USDA should immediately reverse course on its plans to allow the pork industry to police itself, and it certainly should not expand this dangerous plan to the beef industry.

Contaminated beef already sickens more than half a million Americans each year! Many more will get sick or worse if industry lackeys, not trained government veterinarians, are the last line of defense against a pathogen outbreak.

The federal government should make food safety a top priority. Trained food safety inspectors paid by and beholden to taxpayers should be in charge, NOT the meat industry.


Daily Kos
Environmental Working Group