BEEF LIVER BACK IN STOCK
Those of you who follow this blog fairly religiously know that we went through roughly a year of being unable to get our beef livers back from the slaughterhouse because a new inspector unacquainted with the green sheen on grass finished beef livers condemned them as inedible.
We wrestled with the bureaucracy for a year as our cancer patient customers begged for liver. We got some tiny relief when a superior came in and apparently did some in-house training, but were still losing the majority of our livers. This has been ongoing. Not only is it a waste of perfectly wholesome product, it's a loss of $50 per animal which at 300 in a year amounts to $15,000. No small amount.
In the last month a new inspector has come on board at the abattoir and guess what? ALL of our livers are coming back. Wonder of wonders, an educated bureaucrat now declares them all edible. Just like that.
One day to the next. The threads surrounding this debacle are myriad but let me point out the glaring ones.
1. The bureaucrat holds all the power. If you irritate the inspector with a complaint, he just tightens the screw in retribution. It's legalized extortion. And people wonder why I don't want more government oversight of the food system.
2. The rules are subjective, not empirical. Just like the Covid-19 tests are a range on a color chart, the whole system puts faith in a person's personal preference guided by a dubious rulebook. We have no instant replay. The moment something is condemned, it goes in the discard barrel never to be retrieved or seen.
3. The abattoir personnel know the liver is perfectly okay. But they have no incentive to argue for the farmer; they get paid regardless of whether the farmer is profitable or not. They are admonished to simply comply and make the inspector's life easy; otherwise the inspector takes it out on them.
4. The farmer cares for the cows, watches the births, stewards the calf for nearly 3 years and then casts it upon the whims of a bureaucrat. The bureaucrat cares nothing about farm profitability, abattoir profitability, or solving problems. It's just pass or fail; end of discussion. And the farmer is supposed to grin and bow.
5. The customer who desperately wants grass-finished liver for nutritional sustenance can't get it. Arguably the most life-giving portion of the animal, this organ gets thrown in a barrel at the back of the abattoir like a handful of manure. The individual has no voice in determining if the liver is acceptable to eat; the determination is made by the bureaucrat du-jour.
In spite of all this, we have continual efforts to increase government intrusion in the food space. But this does not bring justice. It does not bring equality. It brings political fickleness to something that should enjoy personal choice.
What if we had no inspectors? Private outfits would take over. And chances are the faith in centralized mega-processing plants would deteriorate, giving rise to smaller and more transparent operations. A government inspector is not the only way to insure food safety. Anyone who thinks so has drunk the cool-aid that assumes private citizens are ignorant oafs incapable of discernment and choice.
Do you eat beef liver?