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I wonder if the other Boars Head plants also have issues. Avoid the entire brand? What brands have better hygiene?
by adrianco 2y ago
I wonder if the other Boars Head plants also have issues. Avoid the entire brand? What brands have better hygiene?
- engineer_22 2y agoFrom this, and linked articles on New York Times, the suggestion is laxed food safety standards are endemic across the entire processed food industry.
- jgeada 2y ago[flagged]
- matwood 2y agoThe article paints a picture of lack of enforcement, not regulation.
- darby_nine 2y agoHow do you distinguish these behaviors?
- matwood 2y agoThere are a lot of regulations. They were inspected. They failed inspections. Then the inspectors did nothing. All the additional regulations can be added that we want, but if the inspectors don't close the plant, they are meaningless.
- darby_nine 2y agoSure, but regulation without enforcement is a meaningless concept. This just looks like defacto lack of regulation to me.
- jtbayly 2y agoAgreed. I’m for fewer regulations, but enforced. In this case, we have several deaths. Perhaps the head of the factory and the inspectors that failed to keep the plant safe should be tried for third degree murder or something.
- HarryHirsch 2y agoYou can't. It's meaningless. If the government tells you you have rights, but there's no practical way to claim those rights, then you have no rights and the government is lying in your face.
- greenhearth 2y agoEnforcement is part of regulation
- datavirtue 2y agoIt requires engagement from the employees...a culture. On this, everyone is failing. Our leaders have contorted and conflicting allegiances. Their minds are filled with numbers swelling and cash multiplying. The focus is not on delivering value for all stakeholders.
- ToDougie 2y agoAnd how many of the employees feel comfortable blowing the whistle? A chunk of them are bound to be undocumented/illegally in the US, and it seems like those folks are being taken advantage of already because they have so much to lose. Blowing the whistle on some weird looking green slime or leaks or whatever can mean getting deported. Not saying the worker is a bad person for looking the other way, but I am saying that we are doing this to ourselves and these are some really obvious consequences of awful policy.
- gorbachev 2y agoFrom 2009: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html Slaughterhouses not testing their products for E coli, because it's too expensive. Slaughterhouses blacklisting customers who do their own testing. USDA has no effective regulatory powers to change that.
- dredmorbius 2y agoSingle-page archive: <https://archive.is/OKqta https://archive.is/OKqta>
- briffle 2y agoGoes way before that: https://www.history.com/news/upton-sinclair-the-jungle-us-food-safety-reforms https://www.history.com/news/upton-sinclair-the-jungle-us-fo...
- engineer_22 2y agoIf I remember my US History USDA was a direct response to The Jungle. Society at the time was appalled, and demanded govt action. Similar to the response to Silent Spring and the standing up of EPA.
- nxobject 2y agoI’ll admit, if arguments about nitrates being carcinogenic aren’t a convincing reason to avoid processed meat, this might just be one.
- cdchn 2y agoI always thought Boars Head _was_ the premium brand.
- HarryHirsch 2y agoThere's a German proverb that goes like "a butcher will only eat sausage he has made himself". Now you know the background.
- ryandrake 2y agoPretty scary how many people get fooled by "premium" branding. Think about what made you think that Boars Head was "premium". Was there any evidence that their meats were higher than average quality, that didn't ultimately come from the company itself? Or was it all their product positioning, price, what stores they were found in and so on (in other words, Marketing).
- sandyarmstrong 2y agoCompared to other brands available in the supermarket, my family finds that Boar's Head deli meats consistently taste better. There is something "cheap" that I find hard to quantify in the taste of generic grocery branded deli meats. I'm not educated enough to know what the difference is here, but I don't think the fact that Boar's Head costs more is entirely a marketing device.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ToDougie 2y agoTo my unsophisticated palate, Boar's Head tastes like it has less filler. Will never purchase their product ever again. The findings were so egregious, it makes my blood boil.
- mock-possum 2y ago> There is something "cheap" that I find hard to quantify in the taste of generic grocery branded deli meats. They tend to be watery and under seasoned. I can only assume it’s to make them as inoffensive as possible to accommodate the widest possible audience - but there’s no character to cheap deli meat, no striking taste.
- justin66 2y agoYou can always just go to a butcher.
- pwg 2y agoIn order to do so, one has to have a local butcher who is still in operation. For many, any such local butchers were driven out of business years ago by the lower cost options in the supermarkets produced by the bulk producers, so the option to "just go to a butcher" is no longer available, at any cost.
- justin66 2y agoI’ve never lived in a city or suburb that doesn’t have one locally. Is it a small town thing?
- datavirtue 2y agoIt's available. Just be prepared for Boars Head price shock. Hell, the butcher probably carries Boars Head.
- dredmorbius 2y agoButchers are found throughout much of the US, in at least in urban/suburban areas. If your only local food option is WalMart or Dollar Store, you might have a long trip before you, though with a chest freezer, and an icebox and dry ice for the trip itself, meat tends to freeze and preserve well.
- ncr100 2y agoI recently ate hot dogs from a local butcher. Oh my God -- so much better. Definitely go to a local butcher. You have no idea how much better it is. Comparatively, even the seemingly high quality supermarket Hot dogs taste like water plastic with salt, compared to the delicious meaty spongy texture sausage sticks that are local butcher hot dogs. It's seriously a whole lot better.
- downut 2y ago18 months ago when I moved cross country to the Atlanta area I was delighted and excited to find out that my house was 10 min from a real butcher! OMG, what I always wanted. Then I talked to the counter man (no butcher on site), bought the meats, and then asked some questions about the curing process, and discovered that the reason the meats tasted like Boar's Head is that butcher shop chain (3 stores) explicitly taste competed against Boar's Head. To the point of being "nitrate-free", oops celery is in the label. No point paying the premium (I would have paid double for authentic charcuterie), and then I tried to buy a goose during the Holidays and nope, can't do that. Haven't been back.
- nathan_compton 2y agoI avoid pork entirely. The business is outrageously cruel and dirty even by industrial farming standards.
- taco_emoji 2y agoWhat does pork specifically have to do with this? BH supplies all sorts of deli meat, not just pork
- pfdietz 2y agoDietz & Watson? I have no idea if they are cleaner or not, but I like their name. :)