Private vs. Public Interest

"There should be relentless exposure of and attack upon every evil practice, whether in politics, in business, or in social life. I hail as a benefactor every writer or speaker, every man who, on the platform, or in book, magazine or newspaper, with merciless severity makes such attack, provided always that he in his turn remembers that the attack is of use only if it is absolutely truthful." ~ Theodore Roosevelt.

On February 28, 1906, Doubleday & Co. published The Jungle, by 28-year old Upton Sinclair. The novel became an immediate bestseller and has been in print ever since. Sinclair documented the corrupt practices of the meatpacking industry in Chicago, emphasizing slavish conditions of the workers, but the public reacted adversely to the detailed unsanitary conditions of the meatpacking plants.

Suspicious of Sinclair's socialist leanings and conclusions, President Theodore Roosevelt sent labor commissioner Charles P. Neill and social worker James Bronson Reynolds, men whose honesty and reliability he trusted, to Chicago to make surprise visits to meatpacking facilities. Even though word of intended visits was leaked and the meat packers working three shifts a day for three weeks to clean the factories, conditions of the plants and attitudes of the managers so alarmed Neill and Reynolds, their report inspired President Roosevelt to champion regulation of the meatpacking industry. On June 30, 1906, both the Meat Inspection Act and Pure Food and Drug Act became law.

The Meat Inspection Act required the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to inspect herds before slaughter, each carcass after slaughter, and enforce specified sanitary conditions within the plants. The Pure Food and Drug Act forbade the manufacture, sale, or transportation of adulterated food products and poisonous patent medicines, and led eventually to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

How far deregulation has progressed is detailed in Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001), by Eric Schlosser. Schlosser's description of slaughter houses shows the difference between them and Sinclair's meat packers seems that modern slaughterhouses also violate the Clean Air Act. Vapors from their wastewater lagoons cause headaches, respiratory problems, and, at high levels, nerve damage.

Today, we hear of two or three salmonella outbreaks each year, with hundreds or even thousands being sickened. The worse, Peanut Corp of America (PCA) with plants in Georgia and Texas, has now been shutdown, but its products being recalled have reached over 3000, those sicken in the thousands, hospitalized approaching 100, and deaths at nine. Workers at the plant reported the conditions existed for years, in spite of inspections from private inspectors in the pay of the company, and the manager shipped peanut products after becoming aware of salmonella infection. PCA has declared bankruptcy, but I have not heard of the manager who knowingly shipped contaminated product being charged with murder.

In the recent pistachio salmonella outbreak, Kraft detected the presence of salmonella in its own products, and over several months, tracked it back to Setton, their California supplier. Kraft inspectors at Setton determined the cause was indiscriminate intermingling of raw and roast nuts. Roasting kills salmonella, but the raw nuts were recontaminating the roasted nuts. The point here: Kraft found, tracked, analyzed, and reported to the FDA; the FDA did nothing but a press release.

FDA inspects less than 1% of imported materials within its jurisdiction, and so far has not marked materials refused as being refused, meaning these materials can be reshipped with great probability of being passed. USDA restricted meat imports to those countries who have inspection regimes at least as strict as the US, and volunteered to "loan" FDA some inspectors. FDA refused.

In short, the times have become dangerous for the citizen vs. the corporation who would do its best for itself without regard to who it hurts rather than serves. Further, times should become dangerous for those government officials who serve those corporations for political contributions. "There is absolutely nothing to be said for government by a plutocracy, for government by men very powerful in certain lines and gifted with 'the money touch,' but with ideals which in their essence are merely those of so many glorified pawnbrokers." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"Our aim is not to do away with corporations; on the contrary, these big aggregations are an inevitable development of modern industrialism, and the effort to destroy them would be futile unless accomplished in ways that would work the utmost mischief to the entire body politic. We can do nothing of good in the way of regulating and supervising these corporations until we fix clearly in our minds that we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth." ~ Theodore Roosevelt

"The object of government is the welfare of the people. The material progress and prosperity of a nation are desirable chiefly so far as they lead to the moral and material welfare of all good citizens." ~ Theodore Roosevelt