Seventeen percent of Americans suffered food poisoning last year resulting in death, sickness, and nationwide product recalls. In spite of this, 25 Republican senators voted against improving food safety in the last session of Congress. Republicans viewed the legislation, which passed and became law, as job killing, which it is clearly not. It is the lack of a safe food supply that is job-killing: Most of the western world refuses to buy U.S. beef products. While the rest of the world tests every piece of beef produced, the American beef industry violently opposes testing with the support of Republicans.
It is interesting the G.O.P. doesn't view the lack of food safety as people-killing. The G.O.P. propaganda machine ignores the facts about food safety and keeps churning out pro-business rhetoric - eliminate unnecessary regulations, lower taxes and get the government off the backs of business.
The truth is that food manufacturers consider food poisoning to be part of the cost of doing business. Their legal budget in any given year reflects the funding the company predicts it will need to fight claims. And, here is where Republicans can be a big help: passing legislation to limit tort awards.
In this sense, the food industry measures people's lives in dollars: The additional profits generated from reduced safety procedures and testing versus the cost of legal fees and awards won by plaintiffs years after all appeals have been exhausted.
The food industry loved the Bush administration. For eight years, Republicans cut the number of safety inspectors in regulatory agencies, installed industry professionals as heads of agencies and eased safety standards across the board. This left business and industry virtually policing themselves. Of course, George and Laura didn't need to worry - the White House tests every piece of food served. They just didn't feel everyone else deserved safe food products.
The G.O.P. considers the freedom of business to act unimpeded, in its own self interest, to be as important as an individual's right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Republican version of freedom is the anarchy of business; the right of business and industry to pursue unlimited profits at the expense of the individual. Our nation, defined by Republicans, is nothing more than a marketplace that balances itself through unregulated and unrestrained competition. That's not what I read in our founding documents. Our founding documents talk about personal freedom, not the freedom of large corporations.
Evidently, Republicans feel the seventeen percent of Americans who fall ill from food poisoning each year to be an acceptable casualty rate. Otherwise, Republicans would have voted in favor of food regulation. Republicans would do well to remember that the pursuit of corporate profit does not equal the pursuit of my individual liberty.
And, that is a view from Missouri.
