Journalistic integrity has been slipping for a while, one need only look at the wanton disregard for objectivity by journalists in the first Trump vs Harris Presidential Debate by ABC. As I heard on the radio this morning ABC didn’t put their finger on the scale, they jumped on it. But there are good journalists out there too. Sadly, most of the political coverage I’ve followed, especially in this season, has been biased and freely targeting Donald Trump regardless of the facts. It’s also become increasingly clear that some reporters are more interested in pushing an agenda than adhering to journalistic standards.
It has to end.
The impetus of this post was a facebook meme posted by a friend of mine. The meme in question places the blame for the Boars’ Head Listeria outbreak on the Trump administration. While citing a real action by the administration it fails to conduct any factual analysis and is the type of propaganda that any dictator would be proud of.
I follow a lot of journalists, and I read a lot of articles. In general if the article is covering something not of a political nature the reporters are hit or miss in their quality. If however we enter the realm of the political, all bets are off and of late it has been really easy to identify the Leftists in the room.
Thankfully while writing this some of my hope was restored in the journalistic profession. I want to address this at the beginning, because the articles that I read which reported on just the facts were pretty dang good, were devoid of any real bias, and most importantly really tried to tell the reader what they need to know, not what the author was trying to make them feel. So kudos are required for Lauren Irwin over at The Hill, who wrote a clear Just the facts piece (https://thehill.com/business/4873180-usda-reports-boars-head-plant/), as did Christian Jewett and Teddy Rosenbluth over at the New York Times (https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/health/boars-head-deli-meat-listeria.html), Elaine Mallon over at the Washington Examiner (https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/3150943/usda-flagged-safety-health-violations-boars-head-plant-before-listeria-outbreak/), Mary Kekatos over at ABC (https://abcnews.go.com/Health/listeria-outbreak-left-57-sick-9-dead/story?id=113276874), and many, many more. They deserve an A for their integrity.
Now back to the issue that started this rabbit hole.
Memes like this one put together by The Other 98% (https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1023973179774681&id=100064860241186&paipv=0&eav=AfZVt8M3IMZGMPZruAPVkUjxG4G7DqHPQwwzSZme2wPQc6_o4EB_XaFv-InkwWK9V2Q&_rdr) are only part of the problem.
You don’t expect a meme to give you all the facts, they are messaging tool. Good ones are usually kind of funny, some are propaganda pieces, and some are just good for a laugh.
What is a problem though is when the so-called journalistic professionals become memes themselves. Wanting to actually get the facts I went and looked for them. Thinking that the press might be honest I first came across this article by Vice News (https://www.vice.com/en/article/deadly-listeria-outbreak-boars-head-plant-virginia-bugs-mold/).
Like the meme, Luis Prada decides you need to know this is the fault of Donald Trump.
“It should be noted that in 2019, the Trump administration relaxed safety standards and reduced oversight across the entire pork processing industry. Pork processing companies were suddenly allowed to start policing themselves with federal inspections being fewer and far between. Of course, they said it was all to cut costs and boost production.”
Of course he fails to point out that this happened in September of 2019. Our current outbreak was identified in 2024. That is 5 years. It also is unclear if the decision was a Trump decision, or a political appointee decision. For the record the decision was by Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue (https://www.courthousenews.com/judge-says-trump-administrations-pork-inspection-rules-do-not-violate-industry-health-standards/).
Now it is fair to say that Sonny Perdue was a political appointee and therefore some of the ownership could go to President Trump, but that is vastly different than recognizing who made the decision. That is like saying that if you hired an Uber, and that Uber driver decided to drive through a parade you should be responsible for any casualties caused by the driver’s choice.
Aside from that though, the article makes the assumption that this outbreak is a direct result of a Trump administration decision.
Again, the decision by Secretary Perdue was finalized in the fall of 2019. That was 5 years ago. Joe Biden has been President for almost 4 years now. That is over 3 years where the current administration could have changed the policy. The article I linked earlier was discussing a lawsuit against the policy. That lawsuit was decided in 2022, meaning even if the administration wanted to wait until the litigation was over hoping they could just shrug their shoulders and say “see we didn’t have a choice”, there were still 2 more years available to change this policy.
But here is the thing. I don’t want to blame the Biden administration for this. I don’t want to blame the Trump administration for this. Frankly speaking this is not a Federal administration issue. Or at least it shouldn’t be one.
Lost in the blame game is the fact that Boar’s Head failed to do their due diligence to maintain clean conditions.
Boar’s Head has a fiduciary responsibility to its shareholders to earn a profit, and a contractual responsibility to its customers to provide a safe product.
Boar’s Head failed, and appears to have failed miserably. The lawsuits are already being filed.
Circling back to policy for a minute, the CDC tracks Listeria outbreaks. The consistent number published by the government is that there are on average 1600 Listeria cases annually (https://www.cdc.gov/listeria/about/index.html), with 260 of them being fatal (16.3%). To get to a even better understanding of this we should look at how many cases of food poisoning happen in the United States each year, which is apparently around 48,000,000, 3,000 of which lead to death (https://www.foodpoisoningnews.com/food-poisoning-in-the-united-states-a-comprehensive-overview-of-annual-cases-economic-costs-and-preventive-efforts-by-health-agencies-and-food-poisoning-attorneys/#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20CDC%2C%20an%20estimated%2048%20million,3%2C000%20die%20as%20a%20result%20of%20food%20poisoning). This means that Listeria only accounts for 0.0033% of all the food poisoning instances in the United States at 48 million. Furthermore, all the deaths by listeria account for 0.0005%, and of all the deaths caused Listeria accounts for 8.75%.
One might want to know if the number of Listeria cases has gone up significantly over the past 5 years. Unfortunately I haven’t been able to find those numbers. They are unfortunately not readily available. One of the interesting pieces of data I did find came from a Law Firm that deals with food safety. Those numbers are found here (https://marlerclark.com/foodborne-illnesses/listeria/the-incidence-of-listeria-infections?fbclid=IwY2xjawFPIMNleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHXvc3Lll2rv6I32PUYELyKxUjMMFIQ1uNySJoFLldQMVijyZP3i5RPKLwA_aem_3bNFJM6-eBxuZ5CW0cukWQ), and they show a very a rather interesting disparity from CDC numbers and reported state numbers. While their data doesn’t address the full 50 states, the final year (2014) shows 47 states reporting a total of 675 cases this covers the time period where the CDC claims the average number of cases is 1600, this was also the year with the most number of states reporting and the highest number reported. It leaves some room to wonder just how the CDC estimates 1600 cases per year and 260 deaths per year.
I would like to know if the numbers have gone up significantly. Where is the reporting on that? An increase outside of the standard deviation could indicate that policy changes need to tighten up. Sadly we don’t have those numbers yet.
Luis Prada (https://www.vice.com/en/contributor/luis-prada/) doesn’t want us to know. Instead when we go back to the Vice article we are referred to another article (https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-next-pandemic-could-come-from-an-american-factory-farm/)
The amusing nature of this all is that Luis wants us believe that there is a connection between the Trump Administration and this outbreak by attempting to cite another outbreak.
“Then, just a few years later, there was a massive listeria outbreak at a pork processing plant, lots of hospitalizations with some deaths, and black mold and bugs were found in the plant of one of the biggest producers of deli meat in the United States. Maybe a coincidence, maybe a direct result. Who knows. But it sure is an interesting connection.”
I’ll spare you the pain of reading this piece, it doesn’t discuss a food-born outbreak in the United States. Instead it tried to draw parallels between one of the many Covid-19 origin stories via the wet market to the United States meat packing industry.
It is possible that Luis meant to link another article, but this is the article that was linked within his piece. So that is what we have available to us.
To be fair to Luis, he isn’t the only reporter who is putting his bias before the story. Crystal Graham (Crystal Graham, Author at Augusta Free Press) writes a similar piece (https://augustafreepress.com/news/boars-head-plant-responsible-for-deadly-listeria-outbreak-had-blood-flies-black-mold/) again pointing to some critics from 5 years ago but completely side-stepping the question of has the number of cases risen outside of a statistical norm, and has the current administration had adequate time to change the course.
