During COVID, many normal parts of our lives have fallen by the wayside. But one thing that shouldn't go:
the safety of our food. And yet, that's exactly what Donald Trump and his corrupted Department of Agriculture (USDA) want to gamble with.
Tell Trump we won't let him throw away the protective measures that keep our food safe to eat!It all started with Trump's determination that meat-processing facilities
had to stay open, even though outbreaks of the deadly coronavirus were running rampant through these plants, infecting record numbers of workers who were handling our dinner foods. But it didn't end there. He's since forced governmental agencies to halt protections for meat-packing workers, reduced standards for facility inspections, loosened enforcement of environmental pollution laws for factory farms,
and more.
Then, it reached even more outlandish heights.
In July 2020, the USDA decided to
grant poultry facilities the right to turn diseased chickens... into meat for human consumption.The birds it was particularly referring to are those animals infected with a cancerous virus called Avian Leukosis, which results in malignant tumors and lesions. Under the new rules, poultry plant inspectors
won't have to inspect birds to see if they're filled with this cancerous disease — staff will be free to just throw the animals into machines for processing along with all the rest of the flock.
Even if an inspector
does notice Avian Leukosis in an animal, they now have permission to simply cut off the visible parts of lesions and tumors and then toss the rest of the bird into the grinders.
We don't even know yet whether Avian Leukosis can spread from chickens to humans. We can't afford another epidemic to spread in our populace! This is eerily similar to how COVID-19 started in the first place — with infected animals used for human consumption.
Trump's reasoning for forcing all these rule changes is because, unbelievably, he thinks one of the country's top priorities during a deadly raging pandemic is making sure the country has enough meat to eat. This is mind-bogglingly outrageous.
Sign the petition to demand that the U.S. Department of Agriculture do its job to protect the American people from unsafe and sickening foods. It must shut down the use of diseased birds to become dinner meats!