This article [1] says you get about 500-ish pounds of beef from one cow, so 25,000-ish pounds from 50 cows? They weren't massively far off the mark there.
About 500 pounds of "take home packaged beef". At the import level it's usually "hanging weight" of a beef carcass before butchering, about 700 pounds. In this case, according to Beef Magazine [1], there had been some preliminary butchering at the sending end here, with the take home packages to be made up at the local supermarket, which would result in some midrange weight per cow.
More to the point, Beef Magazine reports this as an ordinary inspection failure event.
It's a recall because, for some reason, the beef didn't go through USDA incoming inspection, and this wasn't discovered until three months later, long after the beef had been sold, and probably consumed. That's a failure of Customs and Border Protection, which is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen. Beef Magazine says that's an automatic trigger for a Class I recall. It's not a political decision.
Unlike the CBS article, the Beef Magazine article names the shipper and gives the lot numbers of the recalled beef. The Beef Magazine author has a degree in agricultural production, teaches Animal and Range Science at Montana State University, and worked their way up from cattle ranch foreman to director of Montana’s Beef Quality Assurance program. He probably knows something about beef.
The CBS author has a degree in Law and Public Policy and has given a TED talk. His LinkedIn profile says he is "one of America's leading food safety advocates." I'd go with what Beef Magazine says here.
What makes you think this is “evil and self-serving”? It affects a relatively small quantity of specific products from a specific supplier with specific use-by dates.
In any case, this is Argentinian beef, not Canadian or something. Isn’t the US administration pretty friendly with the right-wing populist Argentinian government?
They are, leads me to wonder if something was found and the limited hangout is a paperwork snafu. Considering the administration is loudly trying to bring beef prices down via imports, it would look doubly bad if tainted beef came from Trump's bff.
Trump promoted the sale of the beef at a discount a week ago on Truth Social, and now the beef is recalled. Clearly it was bad beef, and he and his cronies made a mint fire-selling it, while American businesses take a loss. Pretty basic corruption.
Honestly more than half of this sort of mess is incompetence rather than malice. But... yeah, sigh. Our grandkids just aren't going to believe what it was like.
Usually I'm with you. In these instances, there's a ton of malice, however, with what DOGE did and the relentless drive from conservatism to shrink government and regulations (many of which aim to protect consumers).
Which interpretation of your comment do you think makes you look better: that you're pretending not to understand the point being made, or that you truly don't understand the point being made?
Meanwhile, the administration is planning to import 661,000,000 lbs of beef to try to reduce record high prices but refuses to say where it will come from.
Of all the many things he did, I argue that this is the stupidest, most pointless and damaging thing he did. There was no upside to doing it. He went out of his way to destroy a program that had been running successfully out of sheer stupidity. He mainly hurt his voters (cattle farmers in rural areas), not democrats. It hurt him on the biggest issue he ran on - inflation.
It was a massive unforced error that he’s been scrambling for months to fix.
He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.
Almost all of his other missteps and mistakes can be rationalised - there was some benefit to himself or someone who bribed him or voted for him. But this screwworm thing just perfectly encapsulates him as a person and his presidency as a whole - something works well for 70 years to protect Americans and he destroys it through malicious incompetence.
Total slaughter of cows in Texas is about 1.8 million head per year.
This article [1] says you get about 500-ish pounds of beef from one cow, so 25,000-ish pounds from 50 cows? They weren't massively far off the mark there.
[1]: https://cattledaily.com/how-much-meat-do-you-get-from-one-co...
More to the point, Beef Magazine reports this as an ordinary inspection failure event. It's a recall because, for some reason, the beef didn't go through USDA incoming inspection, and this wasn't discovered until three months later, long after the beef had been sold, and probably consumed. That's a failure of Customs and Border Protection, which is supposed to make sure that doesn't happen. Beef Magazine says that's an automatic trigger for a Class I recall. It's not a political decision.
Unlike the CBS article, the Beef Magazine article names the shipper and gives the lot numbers of the recalled beef. The Beef Magazine author has a degree in agricultural production, teaches Animal and Range Science at Montana State University, and worked their way up from cattle ranch foreman to director of Montana’s Beef Quality Assurance program. He probably knows something about beef.
The CBS author has a degree in Law and Public Policy and has given a TED talk. His LinkedIn profile says he is "one of America's leading food safety advocates." I'd go with what Beef Magazine says here.
[1] https://www.beefmagazine.com/market-news/argentine-beef-reca...
Even if you halve the yield to 400lbs then it's only 100 cows
In any case, this is Argentinian beef, not Canadian or something. Isn’t the US administration pretty friendly with the right-wing populist Argentinian government?
You mean reading about beef recalls? Yeah they'll be shocked
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/project-2025-plan...
Articles like this one aren't exactly helping either.
It was a massive unforced error that he’s been scrambling for months to fix.
He could literally have done nothing and it would have been better.
Almost all of his other missteps and mistakes can be rationalised - there was some benefit to himself or someone who bribed him or voted for him. But this screwworm thing just perfectly encapsulates him as a person and his presidency as a whole - something works well for 70 years to protect Americans and he destroys it through malicious incompetence.
More info about how the program worked - America’s never ending battle against flesh eating worms (2020) - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/05/flesh-ea...
And then he was re-elected.
Unfortunately, it would seem that stupid, unnecessary, self-own changes are not a red line for a significant fraction of the voting public.