143 million pounds of beef produced by Hallmark/Westland of California.  Good thing this largest food recall in history doesn’t involve a Chinese company. Just imagine how the anti-China crowd would go crazy on this one. Just imagine how the protectionists would be using this for political purposes. The video of abuse towards the cattle was horrendously inhumane. If this was a Chinese food supplier, it would likely have a much harsher spin based upon the animal rights offenses. Remember how petlovers flipped out about poisonous dog food? Oh and I almost forgot the farmers and their lobbyists…they love to applaud how safe they have made our food supply for generations (for the most part they have). In order to promote the farm bill, they used the past Chinese problems to gain emotional support. You can bet they won’t spend too much time discussing this one. How about child protection advocates - are they going to have a proportionate response for an American company as they did when lead paint was found on children’s toys imported from China? We’ll see.

Where’s the beef? Really - where is it? Almost all of it has already been eaten. So it’s a strange recall since we won’t see a recovery of the evidence - thankfully! But if you’ve eaten it at various fast food burger chains or your children consumed about 37 million pounds of it in their school lunch chili and hamburgers, you may not feel too good. It’s great that there appears to be no imminent health risk for the future and since we haven’t seen a pattern of sick people in the past, it’s likely the food was not harmful. However, when the complaints against Hallmark/Westland center around BSE (Mad Cow), this is a serious issue. Consider how we handled BSE concerns when it involved imported beef from Canada. The United States banned imports of Canadian cattle and beef after Canada’s first BSE case in May 2003 and that lasted until July 2005. Certainly our beef industry wouldn’t want the same treatment to be imposed upon us.

Isn’t it weird how this is getting airtime on a holiday? The press has reported on this since the first few days of February. The video of the abusive workers was available since then as well. It just seems a bit odd that the USDA would put out the release of their determinations yesterday (a Sunday) and the day before a national holiday.

As I have said before, it’s impossible to avoid some problems with food safety.  What bothers me is the disproportionate treatment of various groups when comparing domestic and imported products.  Protectionism is a dangerous and growing threat to our economy.  It works both ways so please consider this case the next time you hear a union discussing protectionist demands or a politician promising protectionist policies.