Beef that could kill you!

The answer is as disturbing as it is simple. First President Bush cut the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the government’s watchdog over the meatpacking industry, to shreds. Then the remaining Bush appointees at the USDA watered down workplace safety and food inspection regulations. Only last month, the department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced that it was removing maximum line speed regulations, thereby subjecting meatpacking workers to even more dangerous workplace conditions, and that it was removing on-the-line meat inspectors, thereby increasing the risk to the public of food-borne illnesses.

The United Food and Commercial Workers union and the Safe Food Coalition, which represents victims of food-borne illness, warned the USDA about this when they joined hands in Washington last month to testify against the safety cuts. With Bush though, such warnings fell on deaf ears. For him, big business once again came before workers who suffer debilitating injuries and school children who might fall ill from toxic food.