When Antibiotic-Treated Means Antibiotic-Free
By Monica @ 3:54 PM   
Tyson Chicken labels its chicken as free of antibiotics and growth hormones.
But it turns out that Tyson Chicken has been caught injecting pre-hatched chicks 2-3 days before hatching, with antibiotics. However, they continue to label the chickens they sell as "raised without antibiotics." The USDA told them to stop using the "antibiotic free" label after Tyson lost a suit brought by competitors for false labeling. Now Tyson Chicken is suing the USDA to keep using the term. Why? For a completely understandable reason. The previous USDA rules said that any antibiotic treatments given before the chick is two days old don't actually count when it comes to labeling.
The USDA is not your friend. This story needs to spread far and wide to those who believe that USDA regulations assure quality, safety, and truth in the marketplace.
This story is part of the reason why I don't trust USDA labels, why I want the USDA's ability to regulate food abolished, and why I am moving toward buying all my meat and eggs from producers that I can verify as honest.
I don't need any more government-approved fraudulent labels on my food. Last year, Tyson Chicken was completely within its legal rights (as defined by the USDA) to label antibiotic-treated chickens as raised without antibiotics. That is, until the USDA decided to change its tune following the suit brought against Tyson.
Here is what we need.
We need a truly free market in food, which in part means abolishing the USDA's ability to sponsor lies. The USDA should not have any authority to regulate food inspection or to prevent the local production, local slaughter, or direct farm to consumer sales of completely healthy foods. For them to be able to do so is a violation of an individual's right to trade freely to mutual benefit and even makes our food system demonstrably less safe.
We need companies to start telling the truth and to suffer the full consequences of not doing so. It is notable that without the previous USDA regulations that supported Tyson Chicken's fraudulent labeling, Tyson would probably have already stopped using the "antibiotic free" label by now due to the lawsuit brought by competitors and the subsequent court order. We won't have justice so long as companies can then turn around and sue a government agency that supported their fraud in the first place.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, consumers need to stop believing everything they read. Consumers have a misplaced confidence in the USDA and other government agencies to "protect" them. Ultimately, fraud will only come to some minimum level when the public stops supporting it with their dollars and starts being personally responsible enough to verify claims, either directly or indirectly through independent certification. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend
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