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Comment by beloch | Hacker News Reader

"We are conducting an extensive investigation, working closely with the USDA and government regulatory agencies, as well as with the industry’s leading food safety experts, to determine how our liverwurst produced at our Jarratt, Virginia facility was adulterated and to prevent it from happening again..."

It's pretty clear the failure was with management. They didn't enforce basic standards of cleanliness. If the whole company isn't shut down, their facilities should be inspected frequently to ensure they are compliant with health regulations.

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> It's pretty clear the failure was with management.

It’s more than that though, why were the issues identified not acted on?

Management kept the plant running despite the issues, which probably kept their board happy. That might not be bad management from their perspective.

Is corruption part of this? Many regulatory bodies have a slightly-too-cosy relationship with those they regulate, with a revolving door relationship for staff.

There is also the fact that there is a party in government literally dedicated to shrinking government to the point where it cannot effectively inspect or regulate. The IRS for example is not well funded enough to actually catch rampant tax evasion.

20 years ago I was working at Accenture and they were giving tax software to states for “free” including cracking down on delinquent or underpaying entities. By “free” I mean they received a percentage of any additional tax revenue they brought in through their enforcement. The state got additional revenue it would have otherwise not received without any additional cost, possibly cheaper than had they hired full time staff to do the same job since Accenture built for one state and ported to the rest.

It’s not about deliquent payments but auditing fraudulent returns. Particularly for rich people using all sorts of novel ways to hide taxable money, it does require some investigation to dive deep.

That’s the enforcement part.

I mean, the violations should result in some form of shutting down the facility until it's resolved.

Without consequences, all those inspections do nothing

As mentioned in TFA, the Boars Head Virginia plant has been shut down since the inspection issues in July.

It's crazy there aren't at least annual inspections of food production facilities which would have unearthed the disgusting lack of care sooner. They market themselves as a premium brand, which makes this look even worse.

I mean a month shutdown isn't much of a punishment. They'll go back online, run their staff over capacity, and neglect cleaning and maintenance all over again.

I was a customer, regularly buying several different products including lunch meats and I think I actually did get sick from the lunch meat back around when the recalls were announced.

Never again.

That's basically why we need regulation.

Hardcore libertarians say the free market would fix this, but even if you do get sick it's hard to attribute to which exact product you got sickness from. And in any case this is all after the fact that you bought the thing.

9 people died from this outbreak. The settlements from those 9 deaths should bankrupt the company and put them out of business, or at least close that facility permanently. I feel sorry for the innocent people who may lose their jobs, but those are the same people that should have prevented the problem to begin with. That factory was a stinking mess, and it should have been completely obvious to everyone who worked there.

They inspect you more often when there's been problems recently. Might be a year or two before the inspections to back to annual.

At least that's what our inspectors do - if there's something bad, they'll check up on it later.

Considering this report, why only this facility?

> prevent it from happening again

But the response from management makes it clear they still have their head stuck... in the sand. By refering to the liverwurst when the report makes it clear the problems at the plant were affecting other products - they just are lucky these have not been identified as having killed anyone...

And THAT is the last straw for me and Boar's Head: A recall is fine IF it doesn't paper over lots of other problems. I'm done with Boar's Head as a whole until the rest of management notices this ridiculousity and proclaims a company-wide investigation and cleanup - and then later "distances" itself from incompetent management. That's sad: I have spent a lot of money on their London Broil roast beef, and now I have to find other producers.

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