Reminds me of the chefs that take a base soup and just change/add a single ingredient to make bunch of other soups just to fill their food schedule quotas for the month since they cannot serve the same soup every day.
This article [1] says you get about 500-ish pounds of beef from one cow, so 25,000-ish pounds from 50 cows? They weren't massively far off the mark there.
About 500 pounds of "take home packaged beef". At the import level it's usually "hanging weight" of a beef carcass before butchering, about 700 pounds. In this case, according to Beef Magazine [1], there had been some preliminary butchering at the sending end , with the take home packages to be made up at the local supermarket, which would result in some midrange weight per cow.
More to the point, Beef Magazine reports this as an ordinary inspection failure event.
It's a recall because, for some reason, the beef didn't go through USDA incoming inspection, and this wasn't discovered until three months later, long after the beef had been sold, and probably consumed. That's a failure of Customs and Border Protection, which is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen. Beef Magazine says that's an automatic trigger for a Class I recall. It's not a political decision.
Unlike the CBS article, the Beef Magazine article names the shipper and gives the lot numbers of the recalled beef. The Beef Magazine author has a degree in agricultural production, teaches Animal and Range Science at Montana State University, and worked their way up from cattle ranch foreman to director of Montana’s Beef Quality Assurance program. He probably knows something about beef.
The CBS author has a degree in Law and Public Policy and has given a TED talk. His LinkedIn profile says he is "one of America's leading food safety advocates." I'd go with what Beef Magazine says here.
> About 500 pounds of "take home packaged beef". At the import level it's usually "hanging weight" of a beef carcass before butchering, about 700 pounds.
I'm fine with "about 700 pounds", but that's still not too far off from the 30k pounds the original comment stated for around 50 cows (just over a bit instead of under a bit), so it still holds true that their guesstimate isn't all that far off-base.
So about this quota* of imported beef of secret origin(s) that won't meet regulations: I guess it will be a gamble which will contain e. coli, s. aureus, salmonella, listeria, or mad cow, given that country of origin (CoO) labeling nor lot codes aren't required for retail, processed food, or restaurant sale for ground beef. It can be produced with absolutely zero standards.
* Quota amount of ground beef is 6.7% of yearly consumption: 330k short tons / 660M lbs / 300M kg
US ground beef consumption per year: 4.89M short tons / 9.77B lbs / 4.43B kg
Meanwhile, the administration is planning to import 661,000,000 lbs of beef to try to reduce record high prices but refuses to say where it will come from.
Of all the many things he did, I argue that this is the stupidest, most pointless and damaging thing he did. There was no upside to doing it. He went out of his way to destroy a program that had been running successfully out of sheer stupidity. He mainly hurt his voters (cattle farmers in rural areas), not democrats. It hurt him on the biggest issue he ran on - inflation.
It was a massive unforced error that he’s been scrambling for months to fix.
He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.
Almost all of his other missteps and mistakes can be rationalised - there was some benefit to himself or someone who bribed him or voted for him. But this screwworm thing just perfectly encapsulates him as a person and his presidency as a whole - something works well for 70 years to protect Americans and he destroys it through malicious incompetence.
I think Iran was an enormous blunder that hurt everyone around the world, and will for a long time. But at least I can see what he was aiming for - the acclaim for winning a war and bringing a long time foe to heel. He was sold an easy war by Netanyanhu and being gullible he was easily convinced.
There was a reasonable, desirable goal he was aiming for.
But this screwworm thing is so stupid simply because there was no upside to it. It just hurt Americans, especially Trump voters. No one benefited other than screwworms now feasting on American cattle.
Remember he ended the brutal unsolvable war between Azerbaijan and Albania - when you are operating on that level you get a pass for these minor oversights.
The imported beef will most likely come from all the usual suppliers. Australia. New Zealand. Argentina, right after a recall of Argentinian beef. Canada, just as Trump is renaming bodies of water and raising taxes on his own citizens to spite. etc..
What makes you think this is “evil and self-serving”? It affects a relatively small quantity of specific products from a specific supplier with specific use-by dates.
In any case, this is Argentinian beef, not Canadian or something. Isn’t the US administration pretty friendly with the right-wing populist Argentinian government?
They are, leads me to wonder if something was found and the limited hangout is a paperwork snafu. Considering the administration is loudly trying to bring beef prices down via imports, it would look doubly bad if tainted beef came from Trump's bff.
Argentina's been paying Huawei for 5G gear and services with beef direct to China, who's been selling it via Huawei stores (see https://www.huaweimossel.com/).
Earlier in March a shipment of ~22 tons of beef was rejected by China for having antibiotics in it and was 'contaminated'.
Trump promoted the sale of the beef at a discount a week ago on Truth Social, and now the beef is recalled. Clearly it was bad beef, and he and his cronies made a mint fire-selling it, while American businesses take a loss. Pretty basic corruption.
Honestly more than half of this sort of mess is incompetence rather than malice. But... yeah, sigh. Our grandkids just aren't going to believe what it was like.
Usually I'm with you. In these instances, there's a ton of malice, however, with what DOGE did and the relentless drive from conservatism to shrink government and regulations (many of which aim to protect consumers).
If you look at the trajectory of things since the turn of the century, let alone prior, it's more likely that we'll be recounting stories of today as the 'good ole days.' We didn't start the fire. It was always burning, since the world's been turning. No we didn't light it, and we tried to fight it.
Which interpretation of your comment do you think makes you look better: that you're pretending not to understand the point being made, or that you truly don't understand the point being made?
Edit: Wait a moment. You can put lettuce i a Greek salad. It just happens not to be a Greek salad afterwards. A subtle difference.
Total slaughter of cows in Texas is about 1.8 million head per year.
This article [1] says you get about 500-ish pounds of beef from one cow, so 25,000-ish pounds from 50 cows? They weren't massively far off the mark there.
[1]: https://cattledaily.com/how-much-meat-do-you-get-from-one-co...
More to the point, Beef Magazine reports this as an ordinary inspection failure event. It's a recall because, for some reason, the beef didn't go through USDA incoming inspection, and this wasn't discovered until three months later, long after the beef had been sold, and probably consumed. That's a failure of Customs and Border Protection, which is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen. Beef Magazine says that's an automatic trigger for a Class I recall. It's not a political decision.
Unlike the CBS article, the Beef Magazine article names the shipper and gives the lot numbers of the recalled beef. The Beef Magazine author has a degree in agricultural production, teaches Animal and Range Science at Montana State University, and worked their way up from cattle ranch foreman to director of Montana’s Beef Quality Assurance program. He probably knows something about beef.
The CBS author has a degree in Law and Public Policy and has given a TED talk. His LinkedIn profile says he is "one of America's leading food safety advocates." I'd go with what Beef Magazine says here.
[1] https://www.beefmagazine.com/market-news/argentine-beef-reca...
I'm fine with "about 700 pounds", but that's still not too far off from the 30k pounds the original comment stated for around 50 cows (just over a bit instead of under a bit), so it still holds true that their guesstimate isn't all that far off-base.
Even if you halve the yield to 400lbs then it's only 100 cows
* Quota amount of ground beef is 6.7% of yearly consumption: 330k short tons / 660M lbs / 300M kg
US ground beef consumption per year: 4.89M short tons / 9.77B lbs / 4.43B kg
Articles like this one aren't exactly helping either.
It was a massive unforced error that he’s been scrambling for months to fix.
He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.
Almost all of his other missteps and mistakes can be rationalised - there was some benefit to himself or someone who bribed him or voted for him. But this screwworm thing just perfectly encapsulates him as a person and his presidency as a whole - something works well for 70 years to protect Americans and he destroys it through malicious incompetence.
More info about how the program worked - America’s never ending battle against flesh eating worms (2020) - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
There was a reasonable, desirable goal he was aiming for.
But this screwworm thing is so stupid simply because there was no upside to it. It just hurt Americans, especially Trump voters. No one benefited other than screwworms now feasting on American cattle.
And then he was re-elected.
Unfortunately, it would seem that stupid, unnecessary, self-own changes are not a red line for a significant fraction of the voting public.
In any case, this is Argentinian beef, not Canadian or something. Isn’t the US administration pretty friendly with the right-wing populist Argentinian government?
https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/semiconductors/ra...
Argentina's been paying Huawei for 5G gear and services with beef direct to China, who's been selling it via Huawei stores (see https://www.huaweimossel.com/).
Earlier in March a shipment of ~22 tons of beef was rejected by China for having antibiotics in it and was 'contaminated'.
Follow the trail...
You mean reading about beef recalls? Yeah they'll be shocked