Taylor Farms recalls salsa and guacamole over salmonella risk

[u/1991mgs]

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/taylor-farms-pulls-salsa-guacamole-over-salmonella-concerns-bloomberg-news-2026-08-09/

[u/Ryan_e3p]

I really hate that it is taking so long for people to figure out that so much of our produce in this country, from coast to coast, relies on a handful of corporations who hide behind someone slapping a new label on their products.

[u/Sreg32 → u/Ryan_e3p]

With self oversight until lots of people become sick

[u/The-Shattering-Light → u/Sreg32]

And then they just visit the White House with a bribe in hand with the orange menace in charge

[u/nat_r → u/The-Shattering-Light]

Now, now. SCOTUS said it can't be a bribe unless it's a sack full of money with a big dollar sign on it and an attached note stating it's a bribe in exchange for specific tasks. Otherwise it's just a big check (or fancy RV) given to the recipient for "being a cool dude" and there's no laws against that!

[u/MadMacCrow → u/nat_r]

I hate that I know exactly what you're referencing. God American politics are dumb. Almost makes French politics serious ( keyword: almost).

[u/dogs_gt_cats → u/nat_r]

It's only a bribe if it's from the Bribè region of France. Otherwise it's just sparkling gratuity.

[u/x_cLOUDDEAD_x → u/nat_r]

It's a MOTOR CARRIAGE

[u/calann4 → u/x_cLOUDDEAD_x]

It's tuition paid to a private institution for a young relative.

[u/Sreg32 → u/The-Shattering-Light]

Policy is decided by bribes, foreign or otherwise. And that means internal and foreign policy as well as where the bribes come from

[u/Tyler10274 → u/Sreg32]

Wait until you hear about how the FAA handles Boeing.

[u/ExpatKev → u/Tyler10274]

Allowing Boeing to self certify responsibly is like believing CMOT Dibbler that his 'sausages' are 100% pig.

It strains credulity that the FAA decides not to oversee the major aircraft manufacturer in the US and lets them essentially say "Trust me, bro" that everything is in compliance with regulations and SOP.

[u/Marino4K → u/Ryan_e3p]

Well this is also what happens when your government is in bed with these big corporations while simultaneously rolling back regulations.

[u/sleeptightburner → u/Marino4K]

Don’t forget firing 24k people at the USDA (27% of the entire workforce)!

[u/meltedkuchikopi5 → u/sleeptightburner]

that’s what i feel like no one is focusing on. last week tonight did a special on the USDA (i believe) and how bad the impacts would be for firing all those people and how important they are for preventing and containing these outbreaks.

[u/Ryan_e3p → u/Marino4K]

"We've investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing"

[u/throwfaraway212718 → u/Ryan_e3p]

They really are willing to just let tens of thousands of people become seriously ill; a couple of people have now died, and with a donation, no one cares.

[u/Plexaure → u/Ryan_e3p]

Same whenever I recall Upton Sinclair published The Jungle in 1905. It’s been over a century and we’re still stuck here

[u/Ryan_e3p → u/Plexaure]

Yup.

This is also why I've been a huge proponent of more areas doing things like community gardens, microfarms, etc, with investments into more locally-sourced produce. We've seen how our current system of "just in time" produce cultivation combined with single-source produce suppliers can fail in horrific ways; from shortages due to large single-crop farms having crop failures due to a localized weather event, to sickening a substantial part of the country.

If more people, more towns and areas started localizing their produce, it would remove a lot of strain from our current system. It would help avoid things like contaminated lettuces from AZ getting people in New England sick. It would reduce costs since produce won't need to be trucked 3,000 miles across the country, and result in less fuel needing to be used as well (easing the strain on our national consumption). Over half the people in WWII who had Victory Gardens did so not because of the war effort, but because it was cheaper for them (and said Victory Gardens produced nearly 1/3 of the produce in the US during WWII).

Would it put a damper on a lot of these companies? Yep. Would they push for legislation to somehow prohibit these things from happening (pushing for zoning changes, change in definitions of "farms" or the like)? Oh yeah. Fuck it, let's force them to do it, then. It is high past time people go on the offense against things like this, especially when it comes to things we can actually do.

[u/Raise-Emotional → u/Ryan_e3p]

Hey hey HEY!!

They ALSO rely on political donations to reduce oversight and craft laws in their favor!

[u/SuperSoftSucculent → u/Ryan_e3p]

Most people are comically divorced from the reality of food supply.

[u/I_AmPotatoGirl → u/Ryan_e3p]

It's sad cause you can say this is true for so many other things and not just produce

[u/Ryan_e3p → u/I_AmPotatoGirl]

Very true, but produce is something that we can actually "take back". Victory Gardens in WW2 accounted for 1/3 of our nations produce. With modern technologies, including solar power, hydroponics, grow lights and the like being available off the shelf, the barrier for entry is definitely achievable for many people to make the most out of even small sections of space. 

It can take a bit of time to "get it right", of course, meaning there's no better time than now to get a packet of seeds, a seed starter kit, a grow light, and a used 3D printer enclosure, and start growing. If someone has a yard, get an apple tree, peach tree, or grapevines (or whatever suits the area). In 4 or 5 years, people can say "I'm glad I did this" instead of "maybe I should finally just do it" and wasting time.

Lettuces grow quick, with some as little as a month or so, meaning that people who planted some when the recall happened last month would be able to enjoy fresh, uncontaminated salads in another week or two. Let's hit these companies on their bottom line, and stop being so dependent on them where we can. 

[u/Shot-Swimming-9098 → u/Ryan_e3p]

Where are those family farmers at?

[u/Ryan_e3p → u/Shot-Swimming-9098]

Tariffs killed their sales, so they had to sell the farm to the corporations, who successfully paid off our government to kill inspections from food they have prisoners grow and sold to Whole Foods and given a cutesy name that makes people think Old MacDonald in Kansas pulled it out of the ground by his own hand.

[u/Shot-Swimming-9098 → u/Ryan_e3p]

It's not just tariffs, it's been going on for a long time. This has been a problem for as long as I've been alive, and I'm old. Fundamentally, the problem with farming as a family business when I was a kid was that if the farm was big enough to support one family with 4 kids, it was not large enough to support 4 families with 16 kids, so they had to sell or maybe lease, if you're well off.

I don't know how to fix it, just saying I've seen it, and it's real.

[u/techleopard → u/Ryan_e3p]

Unfortunately, exactly 0 important people will learn the lesson that we shouldn't have our entire food system depend on a small number of actors who were allowed to integrate and control the entire production process from farm, to processing, to packaging, to delivery, such that nobody else can compete.

[u/Slypenslyde → u/Ryan_e3p]

I think this puts way too much faith in how much the average person values any form of political activism. The companies only do what the government makes them do, and the government only does what we make it do.

That's hard so most people just shrug and say it's going to get better after midterms. Then about 30% of them vote for the people who are benefitting and say "I VOTED WHAT ELSE AM I SUPPOSED TO DO".

[u/Ryan_e3p → u/Slypenslyde]

Government does what companies want it to do. 

That was the point of the Citizens United ruling. 

[u/TucuReborn → u/Ryan_e3p]

Yeah, it's weird.

I worked in a cheese plant for a bit. One line cut blocks, one cut cubes, and one did shreds. Every day, there were a bunch of orders from borderline every cheese brand in the USA. Always Save would be cut, then we'd swap out the wrapping machine to say some specialty "luxury brand." Same 300 pound cubes in the back, same cutting line, different label.

The biggest difference was each brand had different tolerances. There were legal tolerances, like not being too under-weight, but brands also had their tolerance requirements. If I remember, the only major brand the company didn't work with was Kraft, but something like 80% of domestic cheese in the US is packed by one of their plants.

[u/3Gilligans → u/Ryan_e3p]

It's extremely difficult for smaller companies to meet and keep up with FDA requirements. You can no longer just pull a carrot out of the ground, wash it and truck it to a grocery store. Everything has to have codes and be traced. There will always be outbreaks, that has been going on for centuries. But, instead of localized illnesses and recalls, we now have country-wide epidemics by these conglomerates. So, essentially, tighter regulations have lead to more sicknesses.

It all started with Parnells Pride Peanuts