The "It" in this case is something dangerous to your health, something that will make you sick. I can't quite wrap my mind around the idea of half a billion eggs. That is one hell of a lot of eggs. And that's how many are being recalled – at least to the present – because over 1000 people have gotten sick from salmonella poisoning spread by eggs. Now it turns out that the owner of one of the two farms from which these eggs came has been cited before for "numerous health, safety, and employment" violations over the years. His name is Jack DeCoster and, get this, he also owns a company called Quality Egg which supplies chickens and feed to both of the farms from which the suspect eggs have come. So boiling this whole story down to its essence, there's one villain we can blame.
I think this latest outbreak of danger in the food is just symptomatic of something that's going on all the time. I'd really like somebody to come along and prove to me that all the myriad facets of agribusiness are focused on the health of the consumer. I don't think so really. Am I just imagining things or are safety and food recalls are becoming more numerous? It seems like every other day now car company is recalling this model were that model. And we have these cases of dangerous food pop up once every couple of years it seems.
This kind of thing is is going to be inevitable in a world run by corporations. Concerned simply with the bottom line, and not really faced with any kind of competition, I think they consider the public relations disasters and loss of patronage connected with health and safety violations just part of the cost of doing business. The more these companies extend their tentacles into the government, the less likely we are to see viable regulation. Which means more bad eggs or something else dangers on your plate in the morning.
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