In which the Big Con reflects on an E.coli conservatism New Year's resolution

I made a resolution this past January 1, in the wee small hours of the morning: put the E. coli back in E. coli conservatism. I launched this blog last April with a post that began, "First they came for the spinach...." [1] That was our manifesto: the sine qua non of our mission, demonstrating the stomach-churning failures (literally and figuratively) of conservative "government" to deliver up the basic requirements for a civilized national existence.

Then I dropped the ball, moving on to other universes of conservative negligence—so many to choose from!—perhaps because this food stuff was so horrifying to contemplate.

I shall no longer shrink from my duty. I shall no longer shrink from my duty. I shall no longer shrink from my duty.

Yesterday the good folks at the Goverment Accounting Office released an outstanding bird's-eye [2] of the ruins, tho' the title hides the carnage behind polite bureaucratic language: "FDA's Food Protection Plan Proposes Positive First Steps, but Capacity to Carry them Out Is Critical."

Let's render that in blunter English, in fact only one word: clusterf*ck. From the report:

• The United States Department of Agriculture is in charge of the safety of 20 percent of our food supply—but, confoundingly, gets the majority of the federal food safety budget. "In contrast, the FDA accounted for only 24 percent of expenditures even though it is responsible for regulating about 80 percent of the food supply."

• The danger: increasing exponentially. "Specifically, the number of FDA-regulated domestic food establishments increased more than 10 percent from fiscal years 2003 to 2007..... Additionally, FDA notes that therehave been dramatic changes in the volume, variety, and complexity of FDA-regulated products arriving at U.S. ports, and recently reported that the number of food entry lines has tripled in the past ten years.

• Federal resources to protect us from those dangers: decreasing in inverse proportion. "[S]taffing for FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) has decreased.... the number of staff years for CFSAN operations at headquarters dropped about 14 percent, from 960 in fiscal year 2003 to 812 in fiscal year 2006. During that same period, field-based staff responsible for carrying out inspection and enforcement activities for CFSAN-related products dropped by 255 staff years, or about 11.5 percent.... In addition, while CFSAN-related funding at headquarters and in the field increased from $407 million in fiscal year 2003 to $439 million in fiscal year 2006, this represents a decrease in real terms from about $457 million to about $451 million during that period."

• "One consequence is that foreign inspection have declined: GAO analysis of FDA data show that inspections of foreign food firms, which number almost 190,000, decreased from 211 in fiscal year 2000 to fewer than 100 in fiscal year 2007.

This is your government on conservatism. Feel safe yet? In fact, if I were one of those Islamofascist terrorists conservatives are always telling us to get so panicky about, I would study documents like this awfully carefully. Exploiting the cracks in this manifestly horrid situation could undermine the very psychic balance of a nation.

All those number, those: very abstract. Let's put it bluntly. Here's one thing all these statistics spell: torturing cows to coverup potential cases of deadly ovine spongiform encephalopathy—mad cow disease. John Aravosis of Americablog [3] explains, and includes video you do not want to see:

A shocking video from the Humane Society about how cows, whose meat is used in America's school lunch program in 36 states, are allegedly being treated by a leading cattle slaughterhouse in California. In an effort to get sickly-looking cows to stand up for inspection by the FDA, the slaughterhouse allegedly shoots water up cows' noses, uses a forklift to shove the animals, jabs them in the eyes, and then uses an electrical prod to shock the cows' rectums. Beyond the inhumanity of it all, there's a reason we don't waterboard cows. Cows that are lying down and refuse to get up may, for example, have Mad Cow disease. That's why we don't want to "fake" inspections.

Two things you should do. First, read more in the Washington Post [4]:

"These were not rogue employees secretly doing these things," the investigator said in a telephone interview on the condition of anonymity because he hopes to infiltrate other slaughterhouses. "This is the pen manager and his assistant doing this right in the open."....

In the 2004-05 school year, the Agriculture Department honored Westland with its Supplier of the Year award for the National School Lunch Program....

Second: vote for conservative candidates in November. Because their solution to the problem is just the ticket: more tax cuts.