A Big Bowl of Wrong

As the salmonella saintpaul investigation dragged the tomato industry kicking & screaming into its third month, we entered the theatre of the bizarre in our nation's capital.

The Thursday hearings by the House Agriculture Committee were enlightening, poisoning, mis-informative & important all at the same time. Admittedly, it was insufferingly boring & pedantic at times, but there was no question we were viewing high drama when Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), tomato in hand, lasered in on Dr. David Acheson of the FDA with these words:

"Why can't you clear tomatoes at this time?"

A pregnant pause ensued, then Acheson went into his patented doublespeak, blaming the CDC, the methodology, the geographical logistics, everything except Greenwich Mean Time for not coming up with the jalapeno/serrano pepper connection sooner.

In fact, in the same way that the FDA's planet-aligning breaking news regarding the peppers had come mere hours before Acheson's testimony Wednesday, I was half-expecting a messenger on horseback to break through the doors of the Rayburn building with up-to-the-minute findings to bail out his tail again.

For awhile during Thursday's hearing, Acheson was under the gun to the extent that I almost started to feel sorry for him. Almost. His forehead was full of these horizontal lines, and he looked like he was in the throes of Excedrin headache #459. But my temporary insanity & sympathy ended once and for all when Acheson spoke to reporters after the hearings.

(From AOL News) "I don't think we can say that (tomatoes) were needlessly dumped," Acheson told reporters after the hearing. "The early part of the investigation clearly implicated tomatoes."

'Don't think that they were needlessly dumped'. Think about that one for a minute. That singular statement means that, according to this guy, there was a need to destroy millions of dollars of pristine merchandise just because some flawed statistical analysis by some bureaucrat thousands of miles away thought it the right thing to do, for 'the public good'.

See, that's their out, Acheson's FDA & the CDC & any other government agency lacking the moral DNA to ever admit a mistake. That's always their out, in the same way that Richard Nixon condoned the Watergate coverup under the guise of national security. Without even a scent of responsibility-taking, they threw the industry under the bus as naturally as they breathe.

What these hearings needed was a real live wire, someone not familiar with Robert's Rules of Order, a pure produce guy who went through these weeks of hell on earth, who didn't sleep at night wondering how all this got out of his control. You know, someone possessing the kind of rabid passion that comes from not knowing if he'll have a job when the sun rises the next morning.

Then maybe Dr. Acheson wouldn't have been able to skate so freely after the hearings as he did.

Later,

Jay