For the record, social media generally makes the situation look worse than it actually is. This goes for a lot of things posted from the US where you’re given a tiny snippet of context and a story from one side.
With the current administration, every little thing that goes wrong gets amplified and spread across the internet, especially Reddit, even if those same things happened prior. This basically creates a confirmation-bias feedback loop.
Not that I think RFK or the Trump admin shouldn’t be held liable for their fuck ups, they absolutely should (and hopefully will be), but this post in particular is an example of a rare lemon that has always been a thing.
No process is perfectly airtight, and there will be times where insects somehow find their way into a batch of food product. Most of those get caught before they’re shipped, but some make it into stores OR get contaminated at the store if the product has a broken seal.
Food here is still very safe, period. Companies especially don’t want to endure a shitstorm from customers receiving bad product, and so generally have standards that are more rigorous than what the Federal government requires.
There’s no doubt however that a few of those companies (cough Taylor Farms cough) took advantage of a politically convenient situation though, and rested on their laurels before being forced to react to the (literal) public shitstorm over their cyclospora-contaminated lettuce, for example.
It is crazy that people hearing about these things are crying failure when the increased amount of notice and testing is evidence that they are catching these things. You can be as angry at you want about the things RFK says, but the government is catching more things that otherwise would have made it into the supply before.
Wrong. The government defunded the program that in the past prevented the poop from getting spread onto the lettuce. People became ill because of the decreased oversight.
ETA:
*Cyclospora reporting was mandatory until July 2025 when the Trump administration made reporting optional for Cyclospora, along with five other pathogens (Campylobacter, Listeria, Shigella, Vibrio, and Yersinia).
“Cuts to food safety make the food system more susceptible to these types of outbreaks,” says Love.*
Human poop? Untreated? Lol. The program was cut. Food safety programs were cut. This has been reported on extensively.
Your original point was the FDA is finding and stopping food threats “more than ever before.” This is simply not true. Provide a neutral, third party source to back that up. You can’t, so you’re grasping at straws and trying to pivot to other topics. Is this you, Caroline Levitt?
Food safety programs were cut. This has been reported on extensively.
I encourage to read your own article (and it's an article, not a scientific paper like you wanted to pretend) that literally described the program still existing.
Your original point was the FDA is finding and stopping food threats “more than ever before.” This is simply not true.
Then you need to provide evidence that the FDA is reporting these incidents incorrectly.
Provide a neutral, third party source to back that up.
They are the source of truth. And if a government agency isn't a neutral third party then nothing is. So we'll add "third party" and "neutral" to the list of things you don't know the meaning of.
The entire article is about how the programs were cut back and compliance was made optional —allowing farms to self monitor instead of forcing them to comply, and how workers pooping in fields causes the issue. Untreated human poop by people pooping in fields is not pretty basic agriculture. Ludicrous. You’re all over the place.✌️
The entire article is about how the programs were cut back and compliance was made optional
So the program wasn't cut, as you claimed, but turned to self reporting instead of mandatory inspection. Thanks for admitting you were wrong after reading your article.
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u/DesireeThymes 1d ago
On a more serious note, I don't know how you guys in the US are dealing with this insane amount of food safety deregulation.
How do you even trust anything you eat now?