I have been unable to find a deli in my town that sells liverwurst. Which saddens me, but maybe it’s for the best, given its prominence in the outbreak. Had no idea Boar’s Head was such a garbage fire. I won’t be buying their meats again.
We have had a number of similar horrible incidents like this happen here in Canada, and I have some strong ideas and feelings about how this has come about, but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that, I now buy local only meats, and have eliminated 95% of processed food from my diet.
Was sitting here thinking about how much I like working from home and doing the simple domestic tasks between desk work and calls and how that contrasts nicely from bieng on the road to see customers, and then shop work.
>but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that
Regulatory capture at work.
Inspector visits the "dirty" bigCo factory and they have an expensive binder for him showing him why everything they do he could possibly take issue is "compliant", citing relevant law, guidelines, specs, etc, etc.
Inspector visits the squeaky clean small time factory and proceeds to write out thousands of dollars of fines for petty things that could have been compliant had the owners had the money to pay to produce all the paperwork showing why their stuff is GTG.
And the inspector and everyone his organization works for say this is all great, and of course they've got self-serving metrics to prove it, because those organizations naturally fill up with people who don't question the premises of what they're doing.
Just about every industry has this going on to a large enough it's a problem degree. It's a pretty f-ed up state of affairs but it won't change because there's so many careers and even entire industries built around it.
>Inspector visits the "dirty" bigCo factory and they have an expensive binder for him showing him why everything they do he could possibly take issue is "compliant", citing relevant law, guidelines, specs, etc, etc.
Inspector visits the squeaky clean small time factory and proceeds to write out thousands of dollars of fines for petty things that could have been compliant had the owners had the money to pay to produce all the paperwork showing why their stuff is GTG.
>And the inspector and everyone his organization works for say this is all great, and of course they've got self-serving metrics to prove it, because those organizations naturally fill up with people who don't question the premises of what they're doing.
I've been through dozens of FDA facility inspections (and dozens more from non-governmental inspection agencies that are regularly used in the food industry, some of which I might say are more strict than the FDA). Nothing you've said matches my experience in any way.
I'm being dramatic here but we both know it's basically how things work at the margin.
When there's a question of a gray area and "compliance by letter but not spirit" type things the BigCo solution that has been engineered and/or gone over by lawyers, etc, etc. almost always wins out even if their hired people have to go a few rounds with the regulator and make some minor tweak to make it happen. A lot of times this is fine and it's common sense progress that the regulator was preventing because of institutional inertia but sometimes it's sketchy slapdash stuff.
My food industry experience is on the "manufacturing the stuff in the factory" side and I assure you nobody who arrives in any of the nondescript white trucks with numbers on them regards the regulatory process as highly as you do.
Regulatory capture here on HN is turning into a meaningless phrase. Whenever a business does something wrong, rather than actually say what's wrong someone just claims it's regulatory capture. It's turned into it's own thought terminating cliche.
Say what the issue is, don't just blame an assumed regulatory capture. In this case state that it's insufficient regulation of the meat processing industry, infrequent inspections of processing plants, or understaffed agencies.
Say what the issues were, not a nebulous "regulatory capture" claim.
Businesses lobby to get FDA regulations weakened - state that's the problem, not a vague "regulatory capture" phase.
I think I articulated the problem pretty well. Incentives are structured such that there is no concept or serious consideration of what the ideal state is, just a bunch of stupid (though they may have been created with a grand plan in mind at one point) requirements that things must meet and it devolves into a box checking exercise that loses sight of the end goal and divides responsibility up so thinly that it basically evaporates. But the regulator, the trade group, the compliance certification orgs, etc, etc. get to trot out some number that shows good thing up and bad thing down and the racket goes on, and they have every financial incentive to do so.
The conditions in TFA don't show up overnight. People were blindly doing checklists for years with no shits given about the big picture. "Hurr durr the rules don't say condensation can't be running down the moldy-ass ceiling so it's fine" and all that. Eventually people got sick, then the regulator had to cover ass so they took a reasonable big picture look at the operation and the results were so bad a Congressional committee said WTF.
Regulating minutia consistently creates these stupid exercises where the forest is lost for the trees. But we won't stop regulating minutia because there are too many jobs and careers and whatnot tied up in it and it's easy to sell to the public.
If you're not hearing any danger music - remember this is the company whose CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades.
>CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades
Your statement is actively misleading (i.e. lying).
After a little digging. That statement was made in 2022 when the CFO, who reports to the company president, who does some of the job of CEO but who reports to some unclear structure of family personalities above him who do a lot of the more strategic bits, was being deposed in a lawsuit (and this would make him very careful about what he says) among members of that family who owned the company. So it's not like he doesn't know who's calling the shots. He doesn't know who the CEO is in the most strict legal technicality sense.
I'm sure they've got some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting, but taking something that's tangential to that and acting like it matters is a great illustration of one of the many things wrong with modern discourse.
> He doesn't know who the CEO is in the most strict legal technicality sense.
You don't see this as a problem?
The corporate governance structure of a company of this magnitude should be well defined, not an array of family members filling various high level roles when it behooves them.
> According to a deposition from 2022, when asked who the CEO of the company was, CFO Steve Kourelakos, a two-decade Boar’s Head veteran, answered, “I’m not sure.”
Based on the Ars article (grim problems discovered at 3 other Boar's Head plants, long after the revelations about their Jarratt facility) your "some unclear structure of family personalities above him" has no real interest in food safety. Which was my point. I did not accuse them of being Bond villains, nor selling Soylent Green.
(FWIW, "some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting" seems a rather misleading summary of the grim details of the inspections of their facilities. Ditto of their demonstrated disinterest in correcting anything. And rather insensitive to all the people hospitalized or killed by Boar's Head's food safety failings last year.)
I have been unable to find a deli in my town that sells liverwurst. Which saddens me, but maybe it’s for the best, given its prominence in the outbreak. Had no idea Boar’s Head was such a garbage fire. I won’t be buying their meats again.
These days, at least in the US, liverwurst is a pretty niche product. Maybe try a local specialty butcher or sausage manufacturer?
Or you could order online from this deli - https://www.zingermans.com/Product/usingers-smoked-liverwurs...
(Though I'd wait for cooler weather, and "Ships frozen" probably won't be cheap.)
Good tip! I’ve been to Zingerman’s, it’s a cool place. Funny how what used to be a deli staple has become a special-order luxury.
We have had a number of similar horrible incidents like this happen here in Canada, and I have some strong ideas and feelings about how this has come about, but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that, I now buy local only meats, and have eliminated 95% of processed food from my diet. Was sitting here thinking about how much I like working from home and doing the simple domestic tasks between desk work and calls and how that contrasts nicely from bieng on the road to see customers, and then shop work.
>but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that
Regulatory capture at work.
Inspector visits the "dirty" bigCo factory and they have an expensive binder for him showing him why everything they do he could possibly take issue is "compliant", citing relevant law, guidelines, specs, etc, etc.
Inspector visits the squeaky clean small time factory and proceeds to write out thousands of dollars of fines for petty things that could have been compliant had the owners had the money to pay to produce all the paperwork showing why their stuff is GTG.
And the inspector and everyone his organization works for say this is all great, and of course they've got self-serving metrics to prove it, because those organizations naturally fill up with people who don't question the premises of what they're doing.
Just about every industry has this going on to a large enough it's a problem degree. It's a pretty f-ed up state of affairs but it won't change because there's so many careers and even entire industries built around it.
>Inspector visits the "dirty" bigCo factory and they have an expensive binder for him showing him why everything they do he could possibly take issue is "compliant", citing relevant law, guidelines, specs, etc, etc. Inspector visits the squeaky clean small time factory and proceeds to write out thousands of dollars of fines for petty things that could have been compliant had the owners had the money to pay to produce all the paperwork showing why their stuff is GTG.
>And the inspector and everyone his organization works for say this is all great, and of course they've got self-serving metrics to prove it, because those organizations naturally fill up with people who don't question the premises of what they're doing.
I've been through dozens of FDA facility inspections (and dozens more from non-governmental inspection agencies that are regularly used in the food industry, some of which I might say are more strict than the FDA). Nothing you've said matches my experience in any way.
I'm being dramatic here but we both know it's basically how things work at the margin.
When there's a question of a gray area and "compliance by letter but not spirit" type things the BigCo solution that has been engineered and/or gone over by lawyers, etc, etc. almost always wins out even if their hired people have to go a few rounds with the regulator and make some minor tweak to make it happen. A lot of times this is fine and it's common sense progress that the regulator was preventing because of institutional inertia but sometimes it's sketchy slapdash stuff.
My food industry experience is on the "manufacturing the stuff in the factory" side and I assure you nobody who arrives in any of the nondescript white trucks with numbers on them regards the regulatory process as highly as you do.
>...I assure you nobody who arrives in any of the nondescript white trucks with numbers on them regards the regulatory process as highly as you do.
I said nothing of how I regard the regulatory process. Don't be presumptuous; doing so disregards the site guidelines.
>Converse curiously
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
> Regulatory capture at work.
Regulatory capture here on HN is turning into a meaningless phrase. Whenever a business does something wrong, rather than actually say what's wrong someone just claims it's regulatory capture. It's turned into it's own thought terminating cliche.
Say what the issue is, don't just blame an assumed regulatory capture. In this case state that it's insufficient regulation of the meat processing industry, infrequent inspections of processing plants, or understaffed agencies.
Say what the issues were, not a nebulous "regulatory capture" claim.
Businesses lobby to get FDA regulations weakened - state that's the problem, not a vague "regulatory capture" phase.
I think I articulated the problem pretty well. Incentives are structured such that there is no concept or serious consideration of what the ideal state is, just a bunch of stupid (though they may have been created with a grand plan in mind at one point) requirements that things must meet and it devolves into a box checking exercise that loses sight of the end goal and divides responsibility up so thinly that it basically evaporates. But the regulator, the trade group, the compliance certification orgs, etc, etc. get to trot out some number that shows good thing up and bad thing down and the racket goes on, and they have every financial incentive to do so.
The conditions in TFA don't show up overnight. People were blindly doing checklists for years with no shits given about the big picture. "Hurr durr the rules don't say condensation can't be running down the moldy-ass ceiling so it's fine" and all that. Eventually people got sick, then the regulator had to cover ass so they took a reasonable big picture look at the operation and the results were so bad a Congressional committee said WTF.
Regulating minutia consistently creates these stupid exercises where the forest is lost for the trees. But we won't stop regulating minutia because there are too many jobs and careers and whatnot tied up in it and it's easy to sell to the public.
If you're not hearing any danger music - remember this is the company whose CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades.
>CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades
Your statement is actively misleading (i.e. lying).
After a little digging. That statement was made in 2022 when the CFO, who reports to the company president, who does some of the job of CEO but who reports to some unclear structure of family personalities above him who do a lot of the more strategic bits, was being deposed in a lawsuit (and this would make him very careful about what he says) among members of that family who owned the company. So it's not like he doesn't know who's calling the shots. He doesn't know who the CEO is in the most strict legal technicality sense.
https://fortune.com/2024/10/14/boars-head-deli-company-ceo-o...
I'm sure they've got some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting, but taking something that's tangential to that and acting like it matters is a great illustration of one of the many things wrong with modern discourse.
> He doesn't know who the CEO is in the most strict legal technicality sense.
You don't see this as a problem?
The corporate governance structure of a company of this magnitude should be well defined, not an array of family members filling various high level roles when it behooves them.
From the Fortune article you linked:
> According to a deposition from 2022, when asked who the CEO of the company was, CFO Steve Kourelakos, a two-decade Boar’s Head veteran, answered, “I’m not sure.”
Based on the Ars article (grim problems discovered at 3 other Boar's Head plants, long after the revelations about their Jarratt facility) your "some unclear structure of family personalities above him" has no real interest in food safety. Which was my point. I did not accuse them of being Bond villains, nor selling Soylent Green.
(FWIW, "some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting" seems a rather misleading summary of the grim details of the inspections of their facilities. Ditto of their demonstrated disinterest in correcting anything. And rather insensitive to all the people hospitalized or killed by Boar's Head's food safety failings last year.)
I agree that GP is a low-effort negative-value comment for the reasons you give.