Tag Archives: safety

Watch the Ads Obama Is Airing in Central America to Keep Kids From Coming to the US

by LynetteF1 Posted on July 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Preparing for his dangerous trip north, a Central American teen stops to pen a letter to his uncle in the United States. He writes that his mom is telling him to think hard about the risks: the gangs on the trains, the cartels that kidnap migrants, the days of walking through the desert. But those roadblocks, he writes, are worth it: “I see myself earning a bunch of money in the United States, and my mom here without any worries.”

More MoJo coverage of the surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America.


70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?


What’s Next for the Children We Deport?


This Is Where the Government Houses the Tens of Thousands of Kids Who Get Caught Crossing the Border


Map: These Are the Places Central American Child Migrants Are Fleeing


“In Texas, We Don’t Turn Our Back on Children”

So begins a new public service announcement aimed at keeping Central American kids from joining the tens of thousands of unaccompanied child migrants who have been apprehended by US authorities in the last year. The PSA soon turns dark, though: After the teen says goodbye to his mother, and his uncle puts down the letter he’s been reading, the camera pulls back from a close-up of the boy, dead on the desert floor. A narrator urges viewers: “They’re our future. Let’s protect them.”

US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) developed the TV ads, as well as posters and marimba-infused radio spots, as part of its million-dollar Dangers Awareness Campaign. Rolled out shortly after Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Guatemala in June, the campaign is an attempt to counter rumors that unaccompanied kids will be allowed to stay in the United States. The ads emphasize that the journey is extremely dangerous and that children won’t get legal status if they make it across the border.

The campaign will run for 11 weeks, CBP spokesman Jaime Ruiz told the Associated Press. “We want a relative that is about to send $5,000, $6,000 to a relative in El Salvador to see this message and say, ‘Oh my God, they’re saying that the journey is more dangerous,'” Ruiz said. “We try to counter the version of the smuggler.”

Here’s the other televised PSA, in which two silhouettes—a would-be migrant and a smuggler—discuss heading north, the smuggler turning increasingly aggressive and his shadow occasionally turning into that of a coyote, the slang word for a smuggler:

(Notably, CBP created slightly different versions of each of the stories for El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, the three countries that have sent the most unaccompanied minors to the US. Watch them all here.)

This type of campaign isn’t anything new. For years, the Mexican government has produced ads about the dangers of walking through the Arizona desert, and several years ago the Department of Homeland Security, as part of CBP’s Border Safety Initiative, distributed CDs to Latin American radio stations with sad songs aimed at slowing immigration from the south. With so many variables at play, it’s virtually impossible to measure their effect.

But with more than 57,000 unaccompanied kids apprehended in the United States since October—a situation that CBP head R. Gil Kerlikowske called “difficult and distressing on a lot of levels” when speaking to members of the Senate homeland security committee on Wednesday—the government seems willing to try anything.

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Watch the Ads Obama Is Airing in Central America to Keep Kids From Coming to the US

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No, the Spitting Attack on a Paralyzed Mom Was Not a Hoax

by Alisa97Gjk Posted on May 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Jennifer Longdon Everytown for Gun Safety

Last week, Mother Jones published an in-depth report exposing vicious, degrading tactics used by gun-rights activists against women, from Arizona to Texas to Indiana. In response, right-wing pundit Dana Loesch and others have claimed that an assault on Jennifer Longdon—a mom, gun owner, and gun violence survivor paralyzed by a bullet—is a hoax. Their attack on Longdon (and Mother Jones) is as stupefyingly inane and illogical as it is wrong.

As I reported in detail last week, a man who recognized Longdon as a gun-reform advocate from a television broadcast approached her in the Indianapolis airport on April 25 and spat in her face. Loesch says that because no video evidence of the attack was presented with the story, it simply could not have happened. “I was in the same airport on April 25th and it was quite busy,” she wrote. “Should be easy to obtain security footage.” Beyond Loesch’s faith in the 24/7 surveillance state as the new standard of fact-finding—nothing is true unless you roll tape!—her comrades say that further proof of a conspiracy rests with CNN supposedly monopolizing all TVs in the Indy airport and having “no record” of the Longdon footage. Got it.

Longdon spoke to me in detail, in multiple interviews, about what she went through in Indianapolis. It was one of many such incidents of harassment and bullying she has endured over several years as an outspoken woman and advocate of gun reform. I confirmed her account of the spitting attack in the airport with other people who she spoke to about it at the time of the incident. The additional harassment and stalking she endured in Phoenix last year, also detailed in my report, was corroborated by a Phoenix police official directly involved in the case.

Each person I spoke with about Longdon in the course of my reporting conveyed that she is a person of integrity and fortitude, qualities you might not be surprised to hear attributed to a person who travels around the country in a wheelchair, in constant physical pain, to advocate for greater public safety. Nobody I spoke with relied on bizarre conjecture and a quick google search, keyword “CNN,” to insinuate she was a liar.

The tactics deployed by Loesch and others to try to discredit our report are nothing new. If they have one shred of evidence that the spitting assault on Longdon didn’t take place, we are all ears. Betcha a nickel—or heck, why not just make it a hundred bucks—that none will be forthcoming.

You can read the full Mother Jones investigation, and the pattern of bullying and harassment it documents in detail, here. You can also watch my discussion of what’s behind this troubling issue with MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, below. Hayes, who also reported on this subject recently, describes the phenomenon this way: “What you’re getting is a gun movement that is dominated by a very small, very hardcore group of people, with very fringe views, who can be very aggressive. And we’ve seen this play out time and time again…in which you’re not just getting arguments about policy, you’re getting rank, pure intimidation.”

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No, the Spitting Attack on a Paralyzed Mom Was Not a Hoax

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You Should Put New Tires on Your Car Every Once in a While

by JaimeLockett Posted on May 13, 2014

Mother Jones

This is hardly the most important topic in the world, but this story from ABC News sure left me scratching my head:

American tire companies have helped to defeat proposed laws in eight states that would require inspection of tires for age….”We oppose legislation that have some sort of age limit on tires,” said Dan Zielinski, executive director of the Rubber Manufacturers of America.

In the most recent case, the trade group spent $36,000 on lobbyists to defeat proposed legislation in the state of Massachusetts that would have included the age of tires on regular vehicle inspections, according to ABC News’ Boston affiliate WCVB, which joined other top ABC News affiliate investigative teams around the country in a national hidden camera investigation into tire safety.

….For consumers, determining the age of a tire can be a daunting task. The date of production can be found in a unique code at the end of 11- or 12-digit identification number on the tire’s sidewall. But instead of the standard month/year display, the tire industry uses a week/year display. For example, a tire produced in early June of 2010 (in the 21st week of the year) would be displayed as 2110, instead of the more common 06/10 that most consumers are accustomed to seeing.

“They did not want to put a date code on tires, specifically because they did not want to give the impression that tires might actually have a service life,” said Kane, the safety consultant.

OK, but why do tire manufacturers oppose the idea that tires have a service life? Wouldn’t a recognized service life lead to more tire sales? I can think of dozens of industries that have successfully run ad campaigns urging consumers to replace items more often than they’re accustomed to, with the goal of selling more stuff. So what’s the difference here?

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You Should Put New Tires on Your Car Every Once in a While

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Meet the Insiders Posing as Grassroots Members of the NRA

by DonetteKoss Posted on May 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Every year at the National Rifle Association’s convention, executive vice president Wayne LaPierre makes a point of extolling the broad, grassroots appeal of the organization’s membership, which may or may not be 4 to 5 million strong. “I think that in human history, seldom has there been a meeting quite like this,” his speech last weekend in Indianapolis began. “A gathering—and you know we are—of all ages, all political parties, races, all religions. A gathering of people who just love our great nation.”

LaPierre and the NRA also unveiled a glossy new video meant to reinforce that all-American message and push back hard against Everytown for Gun Safety, a new group combining Moms Demand Action and Mayors Against Illegal Guns and armed with major funding from Michael Bloomberg.

The NRA video opens with a casually dressed, rugged-looking white guy talking directly into the camera: “Michael Bloomberg says he has 50 million dollars to attack my gun rights. Well, I have 25 dollars to protect them.” He’s referring to the cost of a one-year NRA membership. Then, a veritable rainbow coalition of youngish NRA members flashes by, all of them in agreement: “I’ve got 25 dollars,” says a black guy with a goatee and baseball cap. “And me too,” says a smiling Asian guy. “I’m a mom, and I do too,” says a blonde woman. Hispanic woman? Check. Additional women? Check. A banner across the top invites viewers to “join now.” Then the rugged guy comes back around to ding Bloomberg again: “This guy thinks he can scare us into running from a fight to protect our rights and our freedoms. He’s one guy with millions. We’re millions with our 25 bucks.”

In fact, this group has quite a bit more firepower than it’s letting on. At least seven of the ordinary-looking folks in the video work for NRA News, the media arm of the nation’s biggest gun group. They comprise the official team of NRA News commentators, part of an operation billed as “America’s premier source for Second Amendment news,” which includes a website, multiple video channels, satellite radio programming, and a magazine.

An executive producer for the network, John Popp, confirmed in an email to Mother Jones that the people in the Bloomberg video “are employees of NRA News.” The main talking head is Dom Raso, an ex-Navy SEAL who also stars in a forthcoming NRA production, I Am Forever. In that show, according to the Blaze, Raso “takes his experience as a former operative and breaks it down for a young, 17-year-old girl in an attempt to teach her how to not only be proficient in guns, but also be smart and defend herself.”

NRA News’ Dom Raso schools the young ladies on being badass. NRA

Just prior to this year’s gathering in Indianapolis, NRA News announced that it had added three new commentators to the official team, including two women, Gabby Franco and Nikki Turpeaux, and an openly gay former Google employee from San Francisco, Chris Cheng. They all appear in the video, as do the rest of their colleagues on the team, Natalie Foster, Billy Johnson, and Colion Noir.

It’s unclear what financial rewards underwrite the group’s passion for the Second Amendment: Popp declined to answer questions about the terms of the commentators’ employment, including how much they’re paid for appearing in NRA videos and other programming. Team member Noir recently confirmed in the Los Angeles Times that he was approached by the NRA and agreed to a deal, but also declined to discuss his compensation.

It’s not as if the NRA has gone to great lengths to hide the identities of the people in the video; they are all profiled on the NRA News site. But the video itself doesn’t identify any of them, and most viewers are unlikely to wonder much about who they are, let alone go looking for more information about them.

Such sleight-of-hand is perhaps unsurprising from an organization that raises the specter of a federal gun registry from legislation that in fact specifically outlaws one, or that rolls out a report with a phony mass shooting in it as it calls for more guns in schools. Yet, launching the new video in tandem with LaPierre’s grandiloquent praise in Indianapolis for rank-and-file members may have been intended for a specific purpose—to divert attention from the increasing chasm between the extreme politics of the NRA’s leadership and the views of most Americans, including those of most NRA members.

It may also seem ironic for the NRA to appropriate a David-versus-Goliath theme, given the prodigious sums of money it gets from gun companies and other corporate patrons and that it pumps to its favorite politicians. But it’s also a savvy tactic: LaPierre and company no doubt recognize that they’ve got a growing public-relations problem in the post-Sandy Hook era, not least with women. It’s no coincidence that the NRA also gave its women’s network a makeover last year. (Natalie Foster, one of the NRA News commentators appearing in the video, explains here how the NRA approached her for help and she negotiated with them for months before deciding to “accept the offer.”)

Even if the NRA hopes to come off as a diverse, lady-friendly underdog with the new Bloomberg spot, the finale suggests that the gun group won’t wander far from its usual approach of strafing the opposition. As Raso puts it, “Let’s see who crushes who.”

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Meet the Insiders Posing as Grassroots Members of the NRA

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FDA tells livestock and dairy farmers: We’re cutting you off — no more beer!

by RomanFreio Posted on April 4, 2014

FDA tells livestock and dairy farmers: We’re cutting you off — no more beer!

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The United States is about to have a slew of hungry and sober cows on our hands, which, for the record, is not a good combination for any mammal.

The FDA’s proposed Food Safety Modernization Act guidelines would prohibit breweries from sharing their fermented grains (yum!) with livestock farmers. Farmers have long been using this boozy mash as free feed for their cows, and this relationship has provided an efficient way for both the beer industry to repurpose its waste, and for cows, like so many humans, to possibly enjoy a little buzz with their carb intake.

From Politico:

“This is a practice that’s been going on for centuries without any incident or risk to human health,” said Chris Thorne, vice president of communications for the Beer Institute. Thorne said his association is “cautiously optimistic” that the FDA will address the issue and said several lawmakers have been receptive to its concerns.

Politico reports that 13 senators have moved to block this stipulation of the proposed regulations. Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.), for example, wrote an open letter to FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg to make his case for preserving the brewer-farmer relationship:

Regardless of the size of the brewer – whether the operation is small, medium or large the Colorado experience has been that this industry embraces community and prioritizes sustainable practices. Partnership between brewers and farmers is longstanding and it allows for an environmentally responsible way to dispense with an otherwise useless byproduct.

Udall also argues that decades worth of USDA data on spent brewers’ grains used as livestock feed includes no evidence of compromised food safety. On the citizen front, a petition to change the rules popped up on the White House website.

So what’s the effect on the farms? We learned about the situation of Krainick Dairy in Enumclaw, Wash., from Kendall Jones at Washington Beer Blog. For those curious as to how many pounds of spent grain one farm can use, Krainick Dairy collects between 3 and 4 million pounds of it from 11 breweries and four distilleries in the Puget Sound region, and uses it to feed 1,000 cows. This includes trub and yeast used in the fermentation process.

And how much spent grain would have to be thrown away if these regulations were instated? Seattle’s Georgetown Brewing Company told us that they can produce 200,000 pounds of it in one month, all in service of brewing 20,000 gallons of tasty beer. The Colorado-based Brewers Association issued a statement detailing the additional costs of waste management that breweries across the country would face if the proposed regulations go through:

The proposed FDA rules on animal feed could lead to significantly increased costs and disruption in the handling of spent grain. Brewers of all sizes must either adhere to new processes, testing requirements, recordkeeping and other regulatory requirements or send their spent grain to landfills, wasting a reliable food source for farm animals and triggering a significant economic and environmental cost.

We spoke with Mike Krainick, the owner of Krainick Dairy, about the proposed FDA legislation. He told us that the legislation has significant potential to harm his business.

“It could have a dramatic effect on our livelihood. We’ve spent a lot on trailers and infrastructure and support networks on our farm for all of this, and you don’t pay for that overnight — it’s an investment. I count on the breweries as much as they count on me.”

Let’s review: You have beer and cheese, two wonderful things without which life would be a much more depressing prospect. Their respective methods of production symbiotically support each other. That is a truly beautiful thing – almost as beautiful as beer cheese itself, which is the highest of high praise.

Eve Andrews is a Grist fellow and new Seattle transplant via the mean streets of Chicago, Poughkeepsie, and Pittsburgh, respectively and in order of meanness. Follow her on Twitter.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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FDA tells livestock and dairy farmers: We’re cutting you off — no more beer!

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BPA-Free Plastics May Not Be Safe

by Florencepb7 Posted on March 8, 2014

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BPA-Free Plastics May Not Be Safe

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No rules governed tank that leaked coal-cleaning poison into W.Va. river

by 0df53x21 Posted on February 11, 2014

No rules governed tank that leaked coal-cleaning poison into W.Va. river

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The National Guard

The National Guard delivered emergency water supplies in West Virginia after Freedom Industries ruined the regular water supplies.

The Jan. 9 spill of as much as 10,000 gallons from a steel tank next to the Elk River didn’t just poison water supplies relied upon by 300,000 West Virginians. It revealed holes in state and federal safety rules big enough to drive hazmat-loaded trucks through.

The tanks that Freedom Industries uses to store chemicals at its facility in Charleston are more than 50 years old, and company officials knew that chemicals were being stored in them in ways that did not meet industry or EPA standards.

Environmental consultants audited storage drums for the company late last year, but never inspected the drum that leaked and contaminated water supplies. Its contents — a toxic, little-understood coal-cleaning stew of 4-Methylcyclohexane methanol and something the company calls stripped PPH – were considered nonhazardous under federal law. Still, if anybody had cared to check, they would have discovered that a leak from the aging drum could flow straight through gravel and cinder blocks and into the river.

That’s according to congressional testimony by Rafael Moure-Eraso, chair of the U.S. Chemical Safety Board.

State of West Virginia

Here are the holes in Freedom Industries’ leaky tank.

“While there are laws prohibiting polluting to waterways with a spill, there are not really any clear, mandatory standards for how you site, design, maintain, and inspect non-petroleum tanks at a storage facility,” Moure-Eraso told the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee during a hearing on Monday. “Under existing state and federal laws these tanks, including tank 396, were not regulated by the state or federal government.”

You probably want some kind of an explanation from Freedom Industries about its sloppy chemical-storing practices. But bad luck, because its officials skipped the hearing, even though it was held right in Charleston. The Huffington Post reports:

Freedom Industries, which owns the storage facility that leaked chemicals into the Elk River, did not have any representatives at a hearing of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee held in the state capital Monday morning. The company’s president, Gary Southern, had been invited to testify. …

“The one empty seat … belongs to the one entity at the epicenter of all this,” said Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.Va.), “the one who totally blew it.” …

A representative for Freedom Industries referred questions on the company’s absence at the hearing to its lawyer, Paul Vey. Southern did not attend the hearing, Vey said, “simply because the company is relatively small and we are focused exclusively on remediation of the spill.”

And you probably want to know whether the water supplies are now safe. Again — bad luck. There’s no straight answer. That’s partly due to the fact that so little is known about the chemicals that spilled.

“That’s in a way a difficult thing to say because everyone has a different definition of safe,” state safety official Letitia Tierney told representatives when she was asked whether the water is now safe.

Meanwhile, ThinkProgress reports that West Virginians have begun receiving exorbitant water bills — the price of flushing poisonous water out of their plumbing systems. West Virginia American Water has promised discounts to help residential customers meet the costs of flushing 500 gallons of water apiece. But those discounts have been missing from recent bills.


Source
CSB Testimony from Transportation and Infrastructure Field Hearing on Charleston, WV Chemical Spill, U.S. Chemical Safety Board
The Company Behind West Virginia’s Chemical Spill Skips Congressional Hearing, The Huffington Post
Still No Answer if Water is Safe, WSAZ

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Amanda Hess: "Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet"

by Claudette Posted on January 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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Amanda Hess, who writes about sex, gender politics, and culture, had an explosive essay this week in the Pacific Standard about what it’s like to be a woman on the Internet, especially one in the public eye. Too often, she explains, it’s insanely terrifying. Hess, who’s written for Slate, Wired, and ESPN and lives in Los Angeles, has been stalked for years by an anonymous reader who went by “headlessfemalepig” on Twitter, a now-suspended account that appeared to have been set up solely to send her abusive messages like these:

“I am 36 years old, I did 12 years for ‘manslaughter’, I killed a woman, like you, who decided to make fun of guys cocks.

…Happy to say we live in the same state. Im looking you up, and when I find you, im going to rape you and remove your head.

…You are going to die and I am the one who is going to kill you. I promise you this.”

Headlessfemalepig is just a particularly aggressive example from the thousands of trolls who’ve come at Hess over the years. And Hess, of course, is hardly the only woman on the Internet to face their wrath. From her piece:

“Here’s just a sampling of the noxious online commentary directed at other women in recent years. To Alyssa Royse, a sex and relationships blogger, for saying that she hated The Dark Knight: “you are clearly retarded, i hope someone shoots then rapes you.” To Kathy Sierra, a technology writer, for blogging about software, coding, and design: “i hope someone slits your throat and cums down your gob.” To Lindy West, a writer at the women’s website Jezebel, for critiquing a comedian’s rape joke: “I just want to rape her with a traffic cone.” To Rebecca Watson, an atheist commentator, for blogging about sexism in the skeptic community: “If I lived in Boston I’d put a bullet in your brain.” To Catherine Mayer, a journalist at Time magazine, for no particular reason: “A BOMB HAS BEEN PLACED OUTSIDE YOUR HOME. IT WILL GO OFF AT EXACTLY 10:47 PM ON A TIMER AND TRIGGER DESTROYING EVERYTHING.”

She’s done exhaustive reporting on the failures of law enforcement at all levels to comprehend, let alone address, the emotional, professional, and financial toll of misogynistic online intimidation. She’s called local police, 911, and the FBI on a number of occasions when she feared for her safety IRL; law enforcement officials have recommended to her and other women that they stop wasting time on social media. One Palm Springs police officer responding to her call, she recounts, “anchored his hands on his belt, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘What is Twitter?'” “When authorities treat the Internet as a fantasyland,” she writes, “it has profound effects on the investigation and prosecution of online threats.”

It’s a painful read, but Hess’s piece should be required reading for anyone with an Internet connection. And check out this excellent response by Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic (a “6-foot-2, 195-pound man”), who recalls guest-blogging for a female colleague there who was on vacation. “I’d never been exposed to anything like it before,” he recalls.

“To really understand how it feels to read these missives (to the extent that someone other than the intended recipient can even begin to understand), it’s necessary to experience their regularity. Instead of a lone jerk heckling you as you walk down a major street, imagine dozens of different people channeling the same hyper-aggressive hatefulness, popping up repeatedly on random blocks for hours on end. That’s what some bloggers had to endure over the course of years to make it.”

Friedersdorf notes that this was in the early 2000s, when political bloggers with major-league cache today like Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias were just starting out. “One wonders how many equally talented women we missed out on reading due to misogynists hurling vile invective at rising female journalists.”

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Amanda Hess: "Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet"

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Big food companies want to call GMO foods “natural”

by FletaQYMGpzy Posted on December 20, 2013

Big food companies want to call GMO foods “natural”

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Is genetically engineered food natural? The Grocery Manufacturers Association, a trade group representing some of the world’s biggest food and food-related companies, including ConAgra Foods, Bayer CropScience, and the Coca-Cola Company, thinks so.

And it’s pressing the Food and Drug Administration to see things its way. From a Dec. 5 letter to the feds:

GMA’s members have a strong interest in “natural” labeling for foods containing ingredients derived from biotechnology. Several of the most common ingredients derived from biotechnology are from crops such as soy, corn, canola, and sugar beets. …

[T]here are approximately 65 class action lawsuits that have been filed against food manufacturers over whether foods with ingredients allegedly derived from biotechnology can be labeled “natural.” …

GMA intends to file a Citizen Petition solely direct at asking FDA to issue a regulation authorizing foods containing foods derived from biotechnology to be labeled as “natural.”

An Environmental Working Group rep told The New York Times that the association’s request is “audacious.” The Center for Food Safety is also appalled. “There is nothing natural about genetic engineering,” said Colin O’Neil, the center’s government affairs director, in a press release:

Genetic engineering, by its very definition, is not a natural process. It is an artificial and novel process, which often involves inserting foreign (often bacterial) genetic material into a food plant, crop or animal. The U.S. Patent Office has granted numerous patents on genetically engineered plants, finding that they and novel elements in them are not naturally occurring.

According to FDA policy, food labels can’t be false or misleading. A reasonable consumer would not expect foods labeled “natural” to contain GE ingredients. As such, labeling GE foods with the word “natural” would be exceptionally misleading to consumers.

The same agro-corporations and food manufacturers that want to put the word “natural” on their GMO products are aggressively opposed to putting the word “GMO” on their GMO products. Some labeling is OK, but only if Big Food gets to choose the labels.

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

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Big food companies want to call GMO foods “natural”

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Today’s USDA Meat Safety Chief is Tomorrow’s Agribiz Consultant

by Apollinaryial Posted on December 7, 2013

Mother Jones

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Deloitte Touche is one of the globe’s “big four” auditing and consulting firms. It’s a player in the Big Food/Ag space—Deloitte’s clients include “75% of the Fortune 500 food production companies.” The firm’s US subsidiary, Deloitte & Touche LLP, has a shiny new asset to dangle before its agribusiness clients: It has hired the US Department of Agriculture’s Undersecretary for Food Safety, Elisabeth Hagan. She will “join Deloitte’s consumer products practice as a food safety senior advisor,” the firm stated in a press release. The firm also trumpeted her USDA affiliation:

“Elisabeth will bring to Deloitte an impressive blend of regulatory level oversight and hands-on experience, stemming from her role as the highest ranking food safety official in the U.S.,” said Pat Conroy, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP, and Deloitte’s U.S. consumer products practice leader.

Last month, Hagan announced her imminent resignation from her USDA post, declaring she would be “embarking in mid-December on a new challenge in the private sector.” Now we know what that “challenge” is. It’s impressive that Deloitte managed to bag a sitting USDA undersecretary—especially the one holding the food safety portfolio, charged with overseeing the nation’s slaughterhouses. Awkwardly, Hagan is still “currently serving” her USDA role, the Deloitte press release states. I’m sure the challenge of watchdogging the meat industry while preparing to offer it consulting services won’t last long. The USDA has not announced a time frame for replacing Hagan.

Hagan won’t be the only member of Deloitte’s US food-safety team with ties to the federal agencies charged with overseeing the food industry. You know those new poultry-slaughter rules that Hagan’s erstwhile fiefdom, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, keeps touting, the ones that would save Big Poultry a quarter-billion dollars a year but likely endanger consumers and workers alike, as I laid out most recently here? Craig Henry, a director within Deloitte’s food & product safety practice, served on the USDA-appointed National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, which advised the FSIS on precisely those rules, as this 2012 Federal Register notice shows.

Then there’s Faye Feldstein, who serves Deloitte as a senior adviser for food safety issues, the latest post in what her Deloitte bio call a “33-year career in senior positions in the food industry and in federal and state regulatory agencies.” Before setting up shop as a consultant, Feldstein served a ten-year stint at the Food and Drug Administration in various food-safety roles. Before that, she worked for 12 years at W.R. Grace, a chemical conglomerate with interests in food additives and packaging.

Apart from Hagan’s new career direction, some food-safety advocates have offered praise for her tenure at USDA. They point out that, under her leadership, the FSIS cracked down on certain strains of E. Coli in ground beef, an an important and long-overdue move explained in this post by the veteran journalist Maryn McKenna. On his blog, Bill Marler, a prominent litigator of food-borne illness cases on behalf of consumers, called Hagan “one of the very best who has ever held that position,” adding that she’ll be “sorely missed.”

But if the USDA does make good on its oft-stated intention to finalize those awful new poultry rules, I think Hagan will be remembered most for pushing them ahead, to the delight of the poultry industry and the despair of worker and consumer-safety advocates.

Original article: 

Today’s USDA Meat Safety Chief is Tomorrow’s Agribiz Consultant

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