Welcome to The Jungle, we play dirty games.
Food safety costs a lot, so fuck the FDA
-Food companies, basically.
Welcome to The Jungle, we play dirty games.
Food safety costs a lot, so fuck the FDA
-Food companies, basically.
they used to put brick dust in chocolate bars, and sawdust in bread
edit: heck, they just caught someone recently intentionally putting lead in applesauce cinnamon that was used in applesauce, which has been used off and on as a sweetener since at least ancient rome, where a bunch of people went crazy and died from consuming a sweetener made by boiling grapes in lead pots
I mean if you think about it, cinnamon is essentially sawdust right?
Not wrong...
Copper sulfate used to be added to canned peas because it turns green when it oxidizes, making them look greener.
Copper sulphate is straight up poisonous, enough will kill a passion and low amounts will hurt them.
Anyone who wants to learn more about this history, there is a great episode of the “ridiculous history” podcast that goes into the story that finally got food regulations in the US. A team of people who volunteered to be poisoned to help prove that certain things are unsafe to put in food.
It's also HEAVY, so something light sold by weight just needs a liiiiittle lead to be a lot cheaper to make
This is what caused that pet food scare back in the 00's. Some Chinese manufacturer realized that they were being paid by weight, not volume, so they added heavy metals to their cat food and it poisoned a few cats here in the US.
China executed that guy btw.
My favorite "we had to regulate this" is coal mining. You see, the larger a coal mine tunnel, the more work and time it takes. So smaller tunnels will be more profitable. So in some places they preferred smaller women and children, so they could make make smaller, easier tunnels. This one I only ever found one source on, but supposedly one mine owner noticed that snags on clothing were slowing things down in the narrow tunnels so he insisted on sending them in nude. Nothing more capitalist than naked coal mining children.
The fact that these fucks were not regularly dragged from their mansions and beaten to death blows my mind
Someone somewhere recently pointed out that fascism tends to rear its ugly head every 100 years because everyone that experienced it last time has to be dead before it can happen again.
Americans specifically have had it generally good for so long that anyone incapable of picking up and absorbing information from a history book, which is most Americans, simply don't know how bad it used to be. So they fucking sleepwalk into fascism or allowing regulations to be rolled back.
You'd think that having a written language to chronicle all our mistakes would ensure that we moved forward without repeatedly making those mistakes, but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Exactly. Critical Thinking is the literally the most imoportant skill you cn learn. Critical Thinking is what allows people to recognize nonsensical propaganda immediately upon hearing it, and reject it.
It worked for me back in the late 80s, when Rush Limbaugh got started. He had a very entertaining delivery, but I was easily rejecting his unsourced bullshit and blatant lies, while people were calling in praising him for "opening their eyes." Dude, he's entertaining, I get that, but that doesn't mean he isn’t lying to you.
but the catch is the majority of people have to read the fucking words for that to matter.
Hell, I'd even settle for more people watching classic movies and TV shows. People need to maintain some link to the past to see the mindset of those who lived through fascism, wars, etc. and absorb what a society that rejects those ideas looks like.
Culture is a big part of our collective memory, and a society that can't look back will just reinvent the same problems.
I think it would help to have history-oriented comics and manga in schools. I learned to enjoy history, in no small part on account of Larry Gonick's Cartoon History of the Universe series. Making things approachable is how people progress from knowing nothing to being a college graduate.

When I told my parents how we got things like the 40 hour work week they were fucking mortified. Something seemingly so inconsequential, many people died for.
Vote with your dollar! If tainted baby formula kills your kid, simply refuse to buy that brand anymore!
3 stars. I dislike that it killed my baby, but shipping was really fast!
Damn, just five minutes ago I saw this link shared in another thread:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swill_milk_scandal
🤢🤮
It took us well over a century to establish some sort of framework that makes such horrors almost impossible, but no, regulations are bad 🙄
Same for workers btw. And cows. It's not just about food security. That's just easier to sell to a thoroughly egoistic constituency.
Good ole

Omg is this the joke? Chalk in milk? So it took me 30 years to actually understand this Simpsons joke?
The golden years writers were so genius.
Eventually we Canadians won't even have to boycott American agricultural products, they just won't be able to sell them to us because they won't pass our safety requirements.
I already subscribe to y'alls government emails about recalls, I suggest other Americans do too because many products are sold in both places, and hopefully it would be too expensive to set up two production lines, one for lower or nonexistant US standards and one for Canada. https://recalls-rappels.canada.ca/en for 'muricans who are curious
safety rules and regulations are usually 'written in blood'.
Everyone who wants to remove food regulations should just be shot. I'm so tired of these absolute fools that slept through 10th grade history trying to take us back to the gilded age.
Safety regulations are written in the blood of those who died from unsafe practices.
Whenever a corporation does something good (for example, make a charitable donation) rest assured it’s been calculated that the positive PR will make it financially worthwhile.
And it reduces its tax burden.
It was so much worse than just chalk. Additives included plaster of Paris, lead, cow brain, and fucking formaldehyde
Formaldehyde is natural, or bodies make some of it so it's fine /s
My favourite was hot dog and sausage vendors in big US cities, especially New York, in the early 1900s ..... they would take semi rancid meat, mix it with lye or some chemical to reduce the stench and bacteria, then mix it with red food colouring .... a good batch was known as a mix that didn't make that many people sick.
This is why I've been trying to point out that the ground swell around raw milk seems to have less to do with any critiques of pasteurization (there are no good critiques) and more to do with the fact that if pasteurization isn't mandated as the only way to make milk safe to drink, corporations will seek cheaper options, like mixing raw milk with formaldehyde...
What Conservatives would like us to forget is that many regulations are written in blood.
Same logic with antivax people.
But RandLover1988 on YouTube told me businesses have to sell good things otherwise competitors will come in and they'll go bankrupt, unless there are too many regulations and too much socialism, which is why he got banned for saying the N-word on YouTube. /s
It wasn't chalk, it was borax. And that was because it neutralised the sour taste of turned milk.
One thing people forget is that it was Big Food that wanted regulations.
After the book came out, it was almost impossible for American companies to sell their products overseas. Teddy knew that slapping a government label attesting to quality would mean that American companies would be able to make big profits.
The U.S. won’t need regulations once the last of its trade partners gives up on it. We’ll be free to eat all the domestic lead and asbestos our dear masters deem necessary to feed us.
Sure unbridled capitalism is the way to go as there has never been starvation under capitalism.
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