The Trouble with Chicken and the trouble with President Obama

Dear Friends,

Tonight I watched the "Frontline" on PBS story entitled "The Trouble with Chicken" (here).  This documentary clearly demonstrates several things:  the incredible power of big business over the government, the unwillingness of President Obama (and lots of other Democrats) to stand up to big business and the immortality of big business.  The documentary traces break outs of an incredibly virulent strains of salmonella caused by contaminated chicken and the lack of legal authority of the government to stop the manufacturer from continuing to make and sell contaminated chicken.  If you ever eat chicken, you should watch this documentary.

Foster Farms, the producer that is the subject of much of the documentary, continued to produce and sell chicken, which it knew and the government knew, was contaminated with salmonella Heidelberg and the government was powerless to stop them.  First, Foster Farms should have stopped the production even though the government couldn't force them to and should have made a voluntary recall.  I should note as the documentary does that Cargill had a salmonella problem also, and it initiated a voluntary recall even though it did not have to.  Foster Farms choose profits over people.

The regulators were hamstrung by the lack of legal authority and court cases.  But, the Obama administration has refused to even ask Congress for the additional authority it would need to stop companies like Foster Farms from making hundreds of people very sick and killing some people.  Why would President Obama not even ask for the authority?  These problems were clear early in his Presidency when he had a majority in both house of Congress, but he failed to act.

President Obama claims that we should trust him on the Trans-Pacific Partnership because why would he give into big business at the expense of the American people.  Yet he gives Shell the ability to drill in the Arctic Ocean (perhaps the subject of another post), is still thinking about permitting the Keystone XL pipeline and refuses to stand up to the food industry to keep us safe.  I do not know what he is thinking, but many of his policies clearly favor big business over people, and now he is resorting to bullying tactics because he cannot argue the merits.

Thanks for reading and please comment,
The Unabashed Liberal