• wuffah@lemmy.world
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    4 days ago

    DOGE cuts to federal food safety programs and organizations:

    The changes to FoodNet did not occur in a vacuum. In February 2025, the administration eliminated the USDA’s National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods, which was working on best-practice guidelines to combat foodborne illnesses shortly before its dissolution. In April 2025, federal workforce cuts forced the suspension of the Food Emergency Response Network proficiency testing program, which ensured that the network’s 170 food-testing laboratories could produce quality results during an emergency. The Trump Administration also downsized the CDC’s parasite surveillance team from eleven to just three. Zooming out, important institutions have been hollowed out: the USDA has shed 24,000 workers (an almost 27 percent reduction), the CDC has lost nearly 3,000 (roughly a quarter of its workforce), and the FDA is down more than 4,000 (almost a fifth of its workforce).

    In practice, they’re implementing austerity so they can funnel tax dollars to billionaires in tax breaks and subsidies. In effect, I’m convinced they’re trying to kill us.

    • tburkhol@slrpnk.net
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      4 days ago

      They’ve created a market for private food testing. Luxury brands that do (or at least promise) their own in-house testing and pathogen certification. What are you willing to pay for your health and safety?

      And if some poors die, who cares? There’s plenty more where they came from. /s

    • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      4 days ago

      In effect, I’m convinced they’re trying to kill us.

      I have been saying this for a decade. They know climate change is real. They plan to kill enough of us “to make it work.” They want the last vestiges of the planet for themselves and their offspring.

    • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
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      4 days ago

      In effect, I’m convinced they’re trying to kill us.

      Have you met white supremacists?

      Legitimately, even a cursory familiarity with their line of thinking makes it pretty obvious they’re super into Darwinism.

      That’s why they want women cranking out a dozen babies each with no concern once an infant is born for its welfare

      They’re 100% ok with the majority of their followers having a couple dead babies, because those were “weak” and that means the ones who lived are “strong”. And some of them will die as kids too, that’s also fine, they’re “weak”.

      Anytime anything bad happens, it’s because the person was “weak” and everyone else can feel warm and fuzzy because they’re “strong”. Hell, we see the same rhetoric with employment.

      None of this shit is new, they’re ripping off Sparta again and it’ll end the same way.

      They want bodies for work and/or war, they’re not viewing us and our children as people, we’re a reaource. And if that’s all you think of your workforce, this is what you do to manipulate them.

  • Canis_76@feddit.nl
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    3 days ago

    All I hear are people complaining that the bullet isn’t pretty enough. Focusing on literal shit.