We have had a number of similar horrible incidents like this happen here in Canada, and I have some strong ideas and feelings about how this has come about, but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that, I now buy local only meats, and have eliminated 95% of processed food from my diet.
Was sitting here thinking about how much I like working from home and doing the simple domestic tasks between desk work and calls and how that contrasts nicely from bieng on the road to see customers, and then shop work.
>but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that
Regulatory capture at work.
Inspector visits the "dirty" bigCo factory and they have an expensive binder for him showing him why everything they do he could possibly take issue is "compliant", citing relevant law, guidelines, specs, etc, etc.
Inspector visits the squeaky clean small time factory and proceeds to write out thousands of dollars of fines for petty things that could have been compliant had the owners had the money to pay to produce all the paperwork showing why their stuff is GTG.
And the inspector and everyone his organization works for say this is all great, and of course they've got self-serving metrics to prove it, because those organizations naturally fill up with people who don't question the premises of what they're doing.
Just about every industry has this going on to a large enough it's a problem degree. It's a pretty f-ed up state of affairs but it won't change because there's so many careers and even entire industries built around it.
If you're not hearing any danger music - remember this is the company whose CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades.
>CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades
Your statement is actively misleading (i.e. lying).
After a little digging. That statement was made in 2022 when the CFO, who reports to the company president, who does some of the job of CEO but who reports to some unclear structure of family personalities above him who do a lot of the more strategic bits, was being deposed in a lawsuit (and this would make him very careful about what he says) among members of that family who owned the company. So it's not like he doesn't know who's calling the shots. He doesn't know who the CEO is in the most strict legal technicality sense.
I'm sure they've got some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting, but taking something that's tangential to that and acting like it matters is a great illustration of one of the many things wrong with modern discourse.
> According to a deposition from 2022, when asked who the CEO of the company was, CFO Steve Kourelakos, a two-decade Boar’s Head veteran, answered, “I’m not sure.”
Based on the Ars article (grim problems discovered at 3 other Boar's Head plants, long after the revelations about their Jarratt facility) your "some unclear structure of family personalities above him" has no real interest in food safety. Which was my point. I did not accuse them of being Bond villains, nor selling Soylent Green.
(FWIW, "some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting" seems a rather misleading summary of the grim details of the inspections of their facilities. Ditto of their demonstrated disinterest in correcting anything.)
We have had a number of similar horrible incidents like this happen here in Canada, and I have some strong ideas and feelings about how this has come about, but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that, I now buy local only meats, and have eliminated 95% of processed food from my diet. Was sitting here thinking about how much I like working from home and doing the simple domestic tasks between desk work and calls and how that contrasts nicely from bieng on the road to see customers, and then shop work.
>but knowing that the business model coupled with a beurocratic approach to saftey through chemicals and "certification" is the reason for these vile situations and there is nothing I can do about that
Regulatory capture at work.
Inspector visits the "dirty" bigCo factory and they have an expensive binder for him showing him why everything they do he could possibly take issue is "compliant", citing relevant law, guidelines, specs, etc, etc.
Inspector visits the squeaky clean small time factory and proceeds to write out thousands of dollars of fines for petty things that could have been compliant had the owners had the money to pay to produce all the paperwork showing why their stuff is GTG.
And the inspector and everyone his organization works for say this is all great, and of course they've got self-serving metrics to prove it, because those organizations naturally fill up with people who don't question the premises of what they're doing.
Just about every industry has this going on to a large enough it's a problem degree. It's a pretty f-ed up state of affairs but it won't change because there's so many careers and even entire industries built around it.
If you're not hearing any danger music - remember this is the company whose CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades.
>CFO testified that he was not sure who the company's CEO was. Even though he had worked there for 2 decades
Your statement is actively misleading (i.e. lying).
After a little digging. That statement was made in 2022 when the CFO, who reports to the company president, who does some of the job of CEO but who reports to some unclear structure of family personalities above him who do a lot of the more strategic bits, was being deposed in a lawsuit (and this would make him very careful about what he says) among members of that family who owned the company. So it's not like he doesn't know who's calling the shots. He doesn't know who the CEO is in the most strict legal technicality sense.
https://fortune.com/2024/10/14/boars-head-deli-company-ceo-o...
I'm sure they've got some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting, but taking something that's tangential to that and acting like it matters is a great illustration of one of the many things wrong with modern discourse.
From the Fortune article you linked:
> According to a deposition from 2022, when asked who the CEO of the company was, CFO Steve Kourelakos, a two-decade Boar’s Head veteran, answered, “I’m not sure.”
Based on the Ars article (grim problems discovered at 3 other Boar's Head plants, long after the revelations about their Jarratt facility) your "some unclear structure of family personalities above him" has no real interest in food safety. Which was my point. I did not accuse them of being Bond villains, nor selling Soylent Green.
(FWIW, "some slapdash plants and a whole bunch of stuff that needs correcting" seems a rather misleading summary of the grim details of the inspections of their facilities. Ditto of their demonstrated disinterest in correcting anything.)
I agree that GP is a low-effort negative-value comment for the reasons you give.