Salmonella enteritidis caused the recall of 500,000,000 eggs in America, provoking a nationwide regulatory attack on the poultry industry. As expectable, a culprit had to be found and punished to purify the land of his sins (see "Aedipus"): his name is Austin J.deCoster. The NYT describes the villain:
Mr. DeCoster’s frequent run-ins with regulators over labor, environmental and immigration violations have been well cataloged. But the close connections between Mr. DeCoster’s egg empire and the spread of salmonella in the United States have received far less scrutiny. While some state regulators took steps to clamp down on tainted eggs, the federal government was much slower to act, despite entreaties from state officials alarmed at the growing toll.Presumably, Mr DeCoster's carreer is finished and if he is smart, he will retire to Costa Rica. Knowing how things work in Israel, our Ministry of Health must be planning his own attack on the local poultry industry. Someone will find himself playing DeCoster.
10 comments:
I can say that all of the "bad" conditions described in the article existed on my father's farm. Eggs are not produced in a laboratory but by living, crapping birds. Rodents are attracted to the food supply. The manure accumulates every day. Birds die. Etc. Nevertheless, most eggs are completely safe to eat - the odds of getting an infected egg, even if eaten raw or undercooked, are maybe 1 in 10,000. If the eggs are fully cooked to above 70C (and all persons with compromised immune systems - the sick and elderly, etc. should eat only fully cooked eggs) then the risk is zero.
Nevertheless, your advice for DeCoster is correct - he is now the designated scapegoat and must be cast into the wilderness for the sin of producing cheap, plentiful food. I just read that 45 million people died, mostly of starvation, in the Great Leap Forward (1958-1962) - I'm sure the NYTimes would have approved of Mao's egg production methods more than they do DeCosters. At least Mao was not a dirty capitalist.
K
I had the opportunity to talk to people who lived through the Great Leap and their personal experience was starvation - the 5% of the population died is in my opinion rather low if you consider the children and sick people who died. I talked to a university professor who said that the students were so weak that they fell in class.
But DeCoster would have had a hard time in Mao's China. One of the worst crimes was "trying to be more important than the team" - Lack of humility.
You mean he is an eggo-maniac?
Anon.
I saw DeCoster's testimony on TV - in Chinese terms, he is a "rich peasant" - a wealthy man but not an educated man. He admitted this himself - he grew the operation from a small farm to a giant corporation but at its head was still the small farmer. Growing to this scale is a Darwinian task -you have to kill the competition by underpricing them and the only way you can stay in business is by minimizing costs ruthlessly (and you have to do it instinctively, without benefit of an MBA degree, or any degree at all). Those who were less than ruthless, who did not go for maximum economies of scale and minimum costs, were swept aside. The consumer benefits because you get the product for next to nothing - this goes on in China all the time with all sorts of consumer products. Consumers are hypocrites - they want the product cheap but they don't want the producers to cut any corners. You should be able to buy eggs for 85 cents/dozen AND the chickens should live like royalty, roaming in the grass and pecking at worms. That's impossible - you can't have both. This is what DeCoster should have said, but of course instead he groveled before his overlords in Congress - I would have done the same.
K
Me too. The best escape strategy in a cultural revolution is to confess in advance and in excess one's sins and crimes ad absurdum and promise that the chickens will live a life of personal self realization in nature, hearing Bach while practicing yoga. A happy chicken is a tasty chicken.
I understand that chickens are descended from the jungle fowl of India. Playing Bach for them is the worst form of white man's cultural imperialism. Everyone knows that chickens prefer Indian ragas played on the sitar. Yoga is however culturally appropriate, though some chickens are surely Islamic and would prefer to listen to recitations of the Koran.
K
We are deeply shocked and sorry for our cultural insensitivity. Our chicken diversity officer has already taken measures to remediate our faults and a poultry cultural training program has been made mandatory for all our staff, including the of course the management. We need a DJ to provide appropriate musical background. We are also searching for environmental gurus to provide spiritual guidance (in the future, we are dedicating 80% of our yearly budget to these vital issues). May be you could indicate us chicken-culturally aware persons that could show us the way of chicken-Sanathama Dharma. Our company has always believed in chicken Samsāra (The continuing cycle of birth, life, death and rebirth) and we see in our chickens (hereinafter referred to as "avatars") as our potential selves in another life.
May I introduce to you Mr. Carlos "Rooster" Gonzalez, who will be pleased to act as your chicken culture advisor and part time DJ for an appropriate salary and benefits package. Mr. Gonzalez identifies strongly with the Chicken-American community , as you can see and studied in the department of Poultry Studies of the University of Colorado. His thesis, "What the Cluck is This: Race and Gender Constructs in the Poultry American Community" was very well received academically.
http://www.brawlcall.com/images/rooster.html
K
I love the despair in the striped-shirt guy's eyes. Inwardly, he is cursing that moment twenty years ago when he declared his liberal arts major.
"Rooster" appears overqualified for the job. But he is welcome to join DeCoster Farms's manure treatment team.
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