Politics

693 readers

350 users here now

For civil discussion of US politics. Be excellent to each other.

Rule 1: Posts have the following requirements:
▪️ Post articles about the US only

▪️ Title must match the article headline

▪️ Recent (Past 30 Days)

▪️ No Screenshots/links to other social media sites or link shorteners

Rule 2: Do not copy the entire article into your post. One or two small paragraphs are okay.

Rule 3: Articles based on opinion (unless clearly marked and from a serious publication-No Fox News or equal), misinformation or propaganda will be removed.

Rule 4: Keep it civil. It’s OK to say the subject of an article is behaving like a jerk. It’s not acceptable to say another user is a jerk. Cussing is fine.

Rule 5: Be excellent to each other. Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, will be removed.

Rule 6: Memes, spam, other low effort posting, reposts, advocating violence, off-topic, trolling, offensive, regarding the moderators or meta in content may be removed at any time.

Rule 7. No conjecture type posts (this could, might, may, etc.). Only factual. If the headline is wrong, clarify within the body. More info

Bookmark Vault of Trump's First Term

USAfacts.org

The Alt-Right Playbook

Media owners, CEOs and/or board members

Video: Macklemore's new song critical of Trump and Musk is facing heavy censorship across major platforms.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works

136

FDA Guts Food Safety Testing in Latest Move to 'Make America Healthy Again' (gizmodo.com)

submitted 6 days ago by pelespirit@sh.itjust.works to c/politics@sh.itjust.works

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

First up, the FDA is suspending quality control testing at the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) Proficiency Testing Program, according to a report from Reuters. The program tests for parasites like Cyclospora in spinach and the pesticide glyphosate in barley, among other foods. The suspension was announced internally at the FDA on Tuesday, according to Reuters, which cites an email distributed about staff leaving. The program oversees testing at about 170 labs, which will no longer get quality control checks through at least Sept. 30.

The changes to FERN are a direct result of staffing cuts at the HHS, which oversees agencies like the FDA and CDC. Kennedy is overseeing a reduction in force at the agency that’s seeing about 20,000 people leave through layoffs and departures.

Second, and perhaps even more troubling, is a report from CBS News that the FDA is currently making plans to end most food safety inspections at the federal level. The theory, if you can call it that, is that food safety is something that should only be done at the local level, and you don’t want federal inspectors to just “duplicate” work already done by states.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] PolarKraken@sh.itjust.works 10 points 6 days ago

I swear even before this stuff I've noticed quality slipping. The same kinda cost-cutting that makes simple things like packaging work less well than it did when I was a kid (how often does a bag of something's zipper just rip off and make it impossible to close the thing??)...I could swear I'm starting to see that cost squeeze hit the quality of the products. Finding bones in chicken more often, various grossness in deli meat more often. To say nothing of the reports of nasty conditions at plants that keep coming up.

Maybe it's all the children working the meat packing plants these days, I've always said children make terrible butchers! Should be exciting to see how much more interesting all our food products get in coming years.

All jokes aside, I recently went in on a quarter cow with a friend, from a local rancher. Not an option for everyone, I realize, but I'm starting to buy more locally. I hate to be doom and gloom, but the institutions keeping us safe are being dismantled, visibly, in front of us. And they were not exactly thriving before, either.