USDA Inspection

Ok I'm a day or two late on this but I can't help the fact that I forget things until after I've already done my post for the night.  Anyway!  So obviously I have an issue with the whole mad cow news coming out of California.  And as you can guess from my past posts, it probably isn't what you think it might be.



I'm going to get right to the point as I'm a bit tired.  The problem that I have isn't that there was a cow that contracted the disease.  It is a living animal that can and will contract diseases, just like you and I.  The biggest difference between them and us is that we can tell someone that something isn't right.  Sure, they can communicate in some primitive fashion among themselves but they can't help each other.  And it isn't even that the USDA didn't catch it.  Nope, my problem is with all the idiots that are complaining that the USDA didn't catch it.  They are also complaining about the fact that the USDA only inspects 5% of the cows.  They seem to think that all cows should be inspected.


Apparently there is something like 40 million (or maybe it was 4 billion) pounds of beef processed in the United States each year.  To inspect all that product would require a huge increase in the number of inspectors.  Think about it, if only 5% of the beef is inspected currently.  Sticking with the 40 million pounds, this means we inspect roughly 2 million pounds now.  In order to finish that additional 95% that isn't inspected we would need to increase the number of employees by something like 2000%.  Let's say that the current staff is 50,000 employees.  To inspect the full 40 million pounds we would need somewhere around 1,000,000 employees.  Keep in mind that these numbers are just to prove my point, if they are accurate it is a mistake!


And this doesn't even account for the other products that the USDA inspects.  How long would it be before these people were calling for all animals to be inspected?  Where does it end?  Where do they expect all this money to come from?  I'm sure these people would say that the companies should pay for it and the companies will say that the government should pay for it.  The truth is it won't matter if it is paid for taxes or the company pays for it, consumers will pay for it.  If it is done via taxes that is obvious.  If the company pays for it they will pass the cost on to the consumer in the form of higher prices.


I think the fact that this beef never made it to the market is a testament to the current process.  Yes, the cow wasn't removed from the herd but it had no signs of the disease.  There is just too much product moving to catch everything.  All we can do is put procedures in place to catch as much as possible.  Unless someone is willing to shell out a lot of cash or has some other great idea on how to finance checking everything, stop complaining.