The Doomsday Scenario

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Ah yes, the doomsday device…
 
From the article:
Lapsed FDA and EPA inspections lead to dangerous outbreaks
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What kind of outbreaks do you think they mean?
 
DisorientingSneeze said:
What kind of outbreaks do you think they mean?
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from later in the article

The Food and Drug Administration has already stopped most food inspections, raising the risk of salmonella, E. coli and listeria outbreaks.

“That puts our food supply at risk,” said Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.

The Environmental Protection Agency, where only 700 of 13,000 employees are working during the shutdown, has scaled back inspections, with senior officials focusing only on properties where “the threat to human life or property is imminent.”

Areas that have already been affected by hurricanes and storms are facing additional problems because of the shutdown, with emergency recovery funds reportedly tied up in bureaucratic red tape.
 
I really need someone to explain this to me. Trump ran on the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall. Now our government is shut down because he’s demanding US funding for the wall. Why is anyone supporting him in this?
 
All this Chicken Little alarmism makes me ill.

Food producers won’t start adding salmonella as a special ingredient.

And for perspective, I think Congress mandated a 2yr inspection cycle, so most facilities will not be missing their next inspection.
 
Well I think we should give Trump voters a bit more intellectual credit than that. Firstly, how many voted for him solely or primarily because they wanted a border wall? Secondly, I don’t think anyone seriously believed México was ever going to pay for the wall, and they are absolutely fine with the US paying for it because it is seen as a significant deterrent to illegal border crossing. And finally, remember that México is paying for the wall because we renegotiated NAFTA more in our favor ;).

Personally, I am not real big on a president using emergency powers to fund a wall. It’s a bit…Palpitine-y…
 
Theo520 said:
Food producers won’t start adding salmonella as a special ingredient.
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Obviously. But let’s not pretend that FDA inspections don’t ever find anything that shouldn’t be in our food either.
 
FirstFiveEighth said:
Well I think we should give Trump voters a bit more intellectual credit than that. Firstly, how many voted for him solely or primarily because they wanted a border wall?
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That I don’t know. But there were people on this forum who claimed that Trump’s proposed muscle on immigration was a deciding factor for them. (I wouldn’t suggest anyone read those “Trump Thread” posts again, since there are thousands in those threads and they’re…pretty dismal – but what I’m referring to is there.)
FirstFiveEighth said:
Secondly, I don’t think anyone seriously believed México was ever going to pay for the wall
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People voted for someone they knew was lying? 🤨
FirstFiveEighth said:
Personally, I am not real big on a president using emergency powers to fund a wall. It’s a bit…Palpitine-y…
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Yeah. Or Reichstag fire-y…
 
I am not going to defend Trump on lying. He says nonsense all the time. But I think people try and apply a different standard to Trump vs other politicians simply because they don’t like him. “We are gonna build a wall! And we are gonna make México pay for it!” is a pretty conventional rah-rah political rally slogan as those things go. It sounds cool but most people take them with a grain of salt. Can you honestly tell me that saying “Mexico will pay for the wall!” is any more ridiculous than “abolish ICE!”, “Medicare for all!””free college for everybody!” and the other irrational, pie in the sky promises we saw Democrats make in the midterms? Moreover, Trump has actually surprisingly tried to carry through with this wall, so if you were a voter who voted for him for that, do you blame Trump for its failure, or the Democrats who refuse to provide the funding? I’d bank on the latter.
 
FirstFiveEighth said:
I am not going to defend Trump on lying. He says nonsense all the time. But I think people try and apply a different standard to Trump vs other politicians simply because they don’t like him. “We are gonna build a wall! And we are gonna make México pay for it!” is a pretty conventional rah-rah political rally slogan as those things go. It sounds cool but most people take them with a grain of salt. Can you honestly tell me that saying “Mexico will pay for the wall!” is any more ridiculous than “abolish ICE!”, “Medicare for all!””free college for everybody!” and the other irrational, pie in the sky promises we saw Democrats make in the midterms?
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I think a key difference is that no one promised another sovereign nation would pay for any of these things. That’s a special kind of campaign lie.
FirstFiveEighth said:
Moreover, Trump has actually surprisingly tried to carry through with this wall, so if you were a voter who voted for him for that, do you blame Trump for its failure, or the Democrats who refuse to provide the funding? I’d bank on the latter.
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I have a feeling that those who voted for Trump based on the wall will blame everyone and everything other than Trump for failing to get it built.
 
gracepoole said:
Obviously. But let’s not pretend that FDA inspections don’t ever find anything that shouldn’t be in our food either.
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The inspections find facilities that are not in full compliance with all their regs,
they don’t find salmonella.

All the outbreaks we had came from facilities that had passed their inspections.

What they do is more about setting regulations and responding to outbreaks when they do happen. As I noted the compliance verification is fairly infrequent for most facilities.

We are not at risk from a temp shutdown, the facilities already know the regs
 
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Regarding the FDA: "the Food and Drug Administration, said it’d be “unable to support some routine regulatory and compliance activities,” "

for clarification, the FDA doesn’t even inspect meat, poultry, etc.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees meat, poultry and processed egg products, inspections are still going on during the shutdown because they’re considered essential.
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All we have is faux chicken little alarmism. FAKE NEWS - the media mostly has avoided clearly sharing the facts, opting for anti-Trump alarmism instead.
 
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Well I think that is a distinction without a difference. But I can see we aren’t going to agree, so I will agree to disagree. 🙂
 
Who is this written for? USDA is the one who inspects the truly “at risk” food, not FDA. USDA is on the job at present.

Not to be snide, but EPA’s employees are almost all lawyers whose job it is to sue people or threaten to sue them in order to get money for the agency. A little more time shut down for them won’t hurt much.
 
Ridgerunner said:
A little more time shut down for them won’t hurt much.
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Right, a little more time won’t hurt them much. But if this shutdown goes on for several more weeks or months people may start to realize that a lot of the “non-essential” employees actually are…not essential. That is the real Doomsday scenario in a prolonged shutdown.
 
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I don’t have a whole lot of sympathy with EPA. As I said, it’s almost entirely composed of lawyers who sue people. Not long ago, I read about an example in a town near here. The small city had had an EPA certified removal/disposal company remove some asbestos. That company took it to an EPA certified dump site in Louisiana. Turned out the Louisiana company was way out of compliance, and the State of Louisiana called in EPA. EPA sued everybody up the chain, including the small town, .
 
I swear I didn’t hear the same complaining about Obama’s “if you like your plan” fib from our more liberal posters. Oddly inconsistent, these.
 
I feel confident you can do better than “but liberals” when responding.
 
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