Foods you should avoid during the government shutdown

[signalmankenneth]

(CNN)Should you be worried about the safety of your food during the government shutdown?

The answer is complicated, and it depends who you ask.

"We are very concerned that the shutdown may lead to lapses in food safety, but we don't know where or when these will happen," said Sarah Sorscher, deputy director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.

On Tuesday, the US Food and Drug Administration resumed some food safety inspections that had stopped since the government shutdown began on December 22. Inspectors who are back on the job are doing so without pay.

When asked what foods he won't eat during the shutdown, food safety attorney Bill Marler said, "I would say anything you aren't controlling yourself, so any fresh, uncooked products on the market place," such as ready-to-eat salads and prepackaged sandwiches, or meals that aren't cooked.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/15/healt...isk/index.html

[Irish Exit]

Really just meat products for now. I have a relative who works at a major food processing plant who told me the only time the USDA inspectors really show up is when they are running products that contain meat which they haven't done since the shutdown. Otherwise the inspectors sporadically walk through once in a blue moon looking to make sure there are no leaks in the roofs, etc. The company itself is pretty militant about quality anyway as any recall will cost a mint and damage their brand names. My relative said they trash a shitload of product routinely because of rather minor things like quality control not being happy with whatever like uniform distribution of a component within the end product, etc. If the super sensitive metal sensors go off, the entire days runs will get tossed and lines get shut down until it is resolved.