There was a train derailment incident that was so bad it got US national attention. Spilled a bunch of chemicals into a sensitive area where people live and it polluted a nearby river system.
For months after that story, the media ran more and more derailment stories. Because public outrage about the issue was popular enough that they could keep highlighting ongoing derailments and keep getting clicks and views. Everyone thought it was some new problem we weren't addressing or that someone caused.
The reality wasn't that derailments were suddenly some big new problem we needed to fix. Nothing new was happening to cause them. America's train systems have had this problem for ages. The news just never thought to report on them with as much significance before because the public didn't seem to care. Only when it affected an area where people live.
I know some of what the Trump administration has done is particularly egregious. I'm not defending them one bit. Nearly every recall we've had with meat and produce has some tie to recent food safety deregulation. Now, however, we have to be careful not to fall into recency bias. We have food recalls all the damn time.
This tofu contamination recall is incredibly small. There are seemingly no ties to administration changes in food and drug safety. What the media, and social media, are doing by highlighting more of these events is making the problem seem bigger and more dastardly than it is. They want the eyeballs on them for calling it out, no matter how well or poorly it fits into the narrative. And some of them want you to be scared to buy food.
Take the issue seriously, but also have some discernment.
With that said, RFK Jr. is speedrunning the downfall of the USDA and FDA at lightning speeds. There are outbreaks that we haven't had in decades, and some for centuries.
People want to know that the people in charge are taking this seriously and prioritizing the health of the community/nation.
It is incredibly hard to believe that this administration is doing anything of the sort, so that's why these sort of things get so much attention.
I agree. What RFK Jr. and the whole federal admin is doing is fucked up, making shit worse, and destroying faith in policies that once protected us (at least somewhat).
And I'm confused by the general reactions I'm getting like they read "RFK JR. did nothing wrong" or something rather than the actual words I typed.
We do want more attention to these issues. I am not telling people to tune out or anyone to stop posting about it. My final message was only have some discernment for when the media is trying to make you feel a certain way. We really have to figure out how to actually talk about the issues at hand instead of raging about every single bait post dangled in front of us.
Just as with the trains, this should be covered extensively, this shit shouldnt happen, it shouldnt get buried, and the people responsible shouldnt get to just go on about their day with no repercussions. Have there always been recalls? Yes. Is the news just doing this because it benefits them? Yes. Doednt matter, use the pressure for positive change and stop it from getting worse. Excusing it and lessening it by just saying it alwayd happens isnt helpful even if true.
Because they are paid to do so. There exist a great many people that are making money influencing things toward their sponsors favored direction. We're (the formerly cool but sometimes asshat USA) are spending millions to do this exact thing in Europe.
Recalls are a sign the regulations are working. Not the opposite.
Actually no. The USA food safety was already pretty weak and flimsy for decades due to lobbying... All these recalls are "voluntary" by the company, they are limiting liability here, not being forced to do this by regulation
Even your example of the media covering train derailments happened in the wake of a railroad workers' union being forced by Congress to stop striking; when one of their big concerns was "These railroads are not safe and they need to be inspected more thoroughly/need major infrastructure upgrades."
So no you can't really divorce what's happening from the political climate it happens in. It would be like having Mehmet Oz going on live national TV and saying "We believe sunscreen causes skin cancer," and the following summer there's suddenly a large spike in melanoma cases, and then shrugging and saying "I can't conceive of why this is happening. There's always been melanoma cases in summer. This is just the media manufacturing closer attention."
My response to "don't mistake incompetence for malice" is usually "that applies to regular people. When it comes to governments, I think both malice and incompetence should be a disqualifying factor."
And this isn't some 'let the strongest survive' eugenics shit. It is like saying they want to 'cull the weak' by shooting anyone and everyone regardless of who they are in the head and making a post-hoc explanation that it had to be done.
I thought i saw someone say this was part of project 2025. Not sure what specifically. Also not sure how it matters as we seemingly know what they want to do and how they plan to do it but nothing happens to stop them.
Christ, what the fuck are we supposed to eat anymore? I was leaning vegetarian anyway to curb and cut out meat, but now with veg and fruit and goddamn TOFU being fucked with: what the hell am I going to be able to eat? I'm pretty sure most of us here don't want McD's for lots of obvious reasons, and it's not as cheap as it was before anyway, idk man. Fuck this place. I'd say let's eat the rich, but we might get diseases and worms from them too! I don't know which is it that they deserve: a cross, a ditch, or a guillotine?
It's a tofu fried in chili oil. The heat and oil made ink from the packing film leak through. Presumably adding a cooling step or different packing would solve it.
And it’s 10,000 cases. Sounds like a large number, but in a country of 350,000,000, that’s not that much.
A case of 12 packs of tofu is $60 on the highest end. So this is at most $600,000 worth of tofu.
There is $467,000,000 to $521,000,000 worth of tofu sold in the US every year.
This is a recall of about 1/10th of 1% of the tofu market.
This does happen frequently. Food recalls happen all the time. Under Biden it averaged 135 recalls per month. This term under Trump it’s 126 per month. Under his first term it was 164 per month.
The recalls are NOT the metric to look at though. Recalls are normal. Look at when that recall metric starts to really drop off, because then you know the lack of regulation has taken effect and the companies are no longer letting you know when something has gone wrong.
Recalls are a sign the regulations are working. If recalls go down, there are only two outcomes. Companies are either going above and beyond regulations (LOL) or regulations have relaxed to allow them to not report issues.
Weirdly, the input numbers are way different from what is implied by the screenshot, but your math still very much checks out. In total, 75,250 individual packages of tofu have been recalled, and equivalent varieties of tofu retail for $5.50 per package, which makes roughly $414k (though 30 package cases are presumably less expensive per unit than individual packages, so skew that down a bit), just under a tenth of a percent of the market.
That’s reasonable, and maybe it’s more accurate to the typical size of a case of tofu than I realized.
Reporting 10k 6-unit cases, 500 30-unit cases, and 180 units as 10k+ cases (which news sources are also doing) just seems like it shouldn’t lead to good ballpark estimates though
At this point just switch to whole grains and make everything yourself. Buy whole wheat and make flour. Buy soybeans and make your own tofu and so on. They can't mess that up, can they?
Sir(e), The public is rabble rousing because we defunded and dismantled the food protection departments.
FDA: OK, you're going to send out a new weekly email blocking something, anything so that we show we're providing food safety.
Sir(e), how do we know what to block and not to block?
FDA: I don't care really, make it random, make put it on a dart board. If you go to the store and see a package of tofu with the label on wrong, i don't care just report stuff and do it really often.
I've spent the last month spinning the wheel. Wake up paint the toilet bowel, go back to bed, get up again and paint the toilet bowel. And all I wanted was a salad. I don't recommend it.
I'm sorry that I don't have the answers. If shitty federal regulations are the only thing keeping these companies from killing us, they should be no longer in business. I didn't know how to do that.
76 Comments
BellyPurpledGerbil@sh.itjust.works · 80 pts · 1d
Hey gang. Quick reminder from recent history:
There was a train derailment incident that was so bad it got US national attention. Spilled a bunch of chemicals into a sensitive area where people live and it polluted a nearby river system.
For months after that story, the media ran more and more derailment stories. Because public outrage about the issue was popular enough that they could keep highlighting ongoing derailments and keep getting clicks and views. Everyone thought it was some new problem we weren't addressing or that someone caused.
The reality wasn't that derailments were suddenly some big new problem we needed to fix. Nothing new was happening to cause them. America's train systems have had this problem for ages. The news just never thought to report on them with as much significance before because the public didn't seem to care. Only when it affected an area where people live.
I know some of what the Trump administration has done is particularly egregious. I'm not defending them one bit. Nearly every recall we've had with meat and produce has some tie to recent food safety deregulation. Now, however, we have to be careful not to fall into recency bias. We have food recalls all the damn time.
This tofu contamination recall is incredibly small. There are seemingly no ties to administration changes in food and drug safety. What the media, and social media, are doing by highlighting more of these events is making the problem seem bigger and more dastardly than it is. They want the eyeballs on them for calling it out, no matter how well or poorly it fits into the narrative. And some of them want you to be scared to buy food.
Take the issue seriously, but also have some discernment.
neukenindekeuken@sh.itjust.works · 36 pts · 1d
I'm upvoting you, because you are correct.
With that said, RFK Jr. is speedrunning the downfall of the USDA and FDA at lightning speeds. There are outbreaks that we haven't had in decades, and some for centuries.
People want to know that the people in charge are taking this seriously and prioritizing the health of the community/nation.
It is incredibly hard to believe that this administration is doing anything of the sort, so that's why these sort of things get so much attention.
BellyPurpledGerbil@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
I agree. What RFK Jr. and the whole federal admin is doing is fucked up, making shit worse, and destroying faith in policies that once protected us (at least somewhat).
And I'm confused by the general reactions I'm getting like they read "RFK JR. did nothing wrong" or something rather than the actual words I typed.
We do want more attention to these issues. I am not telling people to tune out or anyone to stop posting about it. My final message was only have some discernment for when the media is trying to make you feel a certain way. We really have to figure out how to actually talk about the issues at hand instead of raging about every single bait post dangled in front of us.
Zizzy@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 10 pts · 1d
Just as with the trains, this should be covered extensively, this shit shouldnt happen, it shouldnt get buried, and the people responsible shouldnt get to just go on about their day with no repercussions. Have there always been recalls? Yes. Is the news just doing this because it benefits them? Yes. Doednt matter, use the pressure for positive change and stop it from getting worse. Excusing it and lessening it by just saying it alwayd happens isnt helpful even if true.
ExperiencedWinter@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 1d
Oh, the agency that had 20% of its workforce cut https://www.foodnavigator.com/Article/2026/02/16/fda-and-usda-staff-cuts-under-trump-raise-food-safety-risks/, then started doing stuff like this https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-revoke-52-obsolete-standards-identity-food-products are not tied to "administration changes"? Wtf are you talking about? Why are you bending over backwards to tell people this isn't the fault of the guy who cut the fda employee base?
Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Because they are paid to do so. There exist a great many people that are making money influencing things toward their sponsors favored direction. We're (the formerly cool but sometimes asshat USA) are spending millions to do this exact thing in Europe.
BananaIsABerry@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 1d
I had the same thought reading this.
"Is this just being talked about more and is a normal amount of recalls or has relaxed regulations lead to an increase in overall recalls."
Jhex@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
So your point is that food safety was already abysmal in the USA and, somehow, that means the fact that it is in the news now is less important?
Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Recalls are a sign the regulations are working. Not the opposite.
You should be wary when the recalls stop.
Jhex@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
Actually no. The USA food safety was already pretty weak and flimsy for decades due to lobbying... All these recalls are "voluntary" by the company, they are limiting liability here, not being forced to do this by regulation
Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Because of the regulations that put liability on them...
If there were no teeth behind them, companies wouldn't voluntarily recall things.
Jhex@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 1d
the teeth are the potential lawsuits coming up... hurting/killing people is still illegal, for now
BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Well, the train safety is abysmal too, along with the environmental protections. I think that's what the OP was getting at.
Jhex@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I think the OP meant "yes, this is bad but it's not newly bad, it has always been really bad you are now just hearing about it more..."
IMO, OP was basically defending the current regime on this
troyunrau@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1d
I like you
Zedd_Prophecy@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
We've had food recalls yes, but what about second recalls? I don't think he knows about second recalls Pippin.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 0 pts · 1d
Even your example of the media covering train derailments happened in the wake of a railroad workers' union being forced by Congress to stop striking; when one of their big concerns was "These railroads are not safe and they need to be inspected more thoroughly/need major infrastructure upgrades."
So no you can't really divorce what's happening from the political climate it happens in. It would be like having Mehmet Oz going on live national TV and saying "We believe sunscreen causes skin cancer," and the following summer there's suddenly a large spike in melanoma cases, and then shrugging and saying "I can't conceive of why this is happening. There's always been melanoma cases in summer. This is just the media manufacturing closer attention."
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 30 pts · 1d
I no longer believe any of this is mere incompetence.
They actively want us to die.
Not that it makes a whole lot of difference what their intentions are, though:
Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 16 pts · 1d
covid taught me that malice and incompetence were the same thing with a lot of people.
markjamestwn1301@scribe.disroot.org · 11 pts · 1d
My response to "don't mistake incompetence for malice" is usually "that applies to regular people. When it comes to governments, I think both malice and incompetence should be a disqualifying factor."
Draegur@lemmy.zip · 3 pts · 1d
If only we had managed to disqualify them...
ArmchairAce1944@discuss.online · 8 pts · 1d
And this isn't some 'let the strongest survive' eugenics shit. It is like saying they want to 'cull the weak' by shooting anyone and everyone regardless of who they are in the head and making a post-hoc explanation that it had to be done.
sunbytes@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 6h
They don't want us to die until AI can take over the jobs.
They still need plebs to take money from and to make children for them to ah... "party" with.
For now i think don't think of them as hating you. That's a bit like saying someone eating a steak hates cows.
Or fries --> potatoes (lemmy requires us to provide a vegetarian option with our analogies).
AdolfSchmitler@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 5h
I thought i saw someone say this was part of project 2025. Not sure what specifically. Also not sure how it matters as we seemingly know what they want to do and how they plan to do it but nothing happens to stop them.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 6h
Given that some people will inevitably die from these policy decisions this is 100% social murder
db2@lemmy.world · 29 pts · 1d
RFK Jr has confirmed that addiction to air will make you gay and dead, so you should stop using air immediately unless you're gay or dead.
burido@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
I'm too tired to care about being gay or not, who cares?
fleebleneeble@reddthat.com · 22 pts · 1d
Christ, what the fuck are we supposed to eat anymore? I was leaning vegetarian anyway to curb and cut out meat, but now with veg and fruit and goddamn TOFU being fucked with: what the hell am I going to be able to eat? I'm pretty sure most of us here don't want McD's for lots of obvious reasons, and it's not as cheap as it was before anyway, idk man. Fuck this place. I'd say let's eat the rich, but we might get diseases and worms from them too! I don't know which is it that they deserve: a cross, a ditch, or a guillotine?
M0oP0o@mander.xyz · 8 pts · 1d
"Freedom" ^Tm^
Its what is (and all) for dinner!
architect@thelemmy.club · 5 pts · 1d
McDonalds gave me bad food poisoning this year. Like i exploded out both ends they poisoned me. So no, it’s not safe either.
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works · 15 pts · 1d
It's a tofu fried in chili oil. The heat and oil made ink from the packing film leak through. Presumably adding a cooling step or different packing would solve it.
Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world · 14 pts · 1d
And it’s 10,000 cases. Sounds like a large number, but in a country of 350,000,000, that’s not that much.
A case of 12 packs of tofu is $60 on the highest end. So this is at most $600,000 worth of tofu.
There is $467,000,000 to $521,000,000 worth of tofu sold in the US every year.
This is a recall of about 1/10th of 1% of the tofu market.
This does happen frequently. Food recalls happen all the time. Under Biden it averaged 135 recalls per month. This term under Trump it’s 126 per month. Under his first term it was 164 per month.
The recalls are NOT the metric to look at though. Recalls are normal. Look at when that recall metric starts to really drop off, because then you know the lack of regulation has taken effect and the companies are no longer letting you know when something has gone wrong.
Recalls are a sign the regulations are working. If recalls go down, there are only two outcomes. Companies are either going above and beyond regulations (LOL) or regulations have relaxed to allow them to not report issues.
More recalls are not an issue. Fewer recalls are.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Weirdly, the input numbers are way different from what is implied by the screenshot, but your math still very much checks out. In total, 75,250 individual packages of tofu have been recalled, and equivalent varieties of tofu retail for $5.50 per package, which makes roughly $414k (though 30 package cases are presumably less expensive per unit than individual packages, so skew that down a bit), just under a tenth of a percent of the market.
Earthwormjim91@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Yeah I just did a quick search for how much a case of tofu cost lol. I got $28-60, so went with the high end of that.
idiomaddict@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
That’s reasonable, and maybe it’s more accurate to the typical size of a case of tofu than I realized.
Reporting 10k 6-unit cases, 500 30-unit cases, and 180 units as 10k+ cases (which news sources are also doing) just seems like it shouldn’t lead to good ballpark estimates though
14th_cylon@lemmy.zip · 9 pts · 1d
presumably removing the packaging material before you subject any food to heat might help as well.
phdepressed@sh.itjust.works · 6 pts · 1d
I think it was just put in heated, which is pretty common for a lot of foods. Really makes you never want a plastic package ever again.
14th_cylon@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
oh. that would make sense.
mannycalavera@feddit.uk · 14 pts · 1d
Why is RFK next to the picture of tofu? Is it because he looks like a tofu?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 11 pts · 1d
yes, aged fermented tofu.
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 1d
The extra stinky kind.
DakRalter@thelemmy.club · 5 pts · 1d
The stinky, inky kind, in this case.
oozynozh@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 1d
maybe the tofu was contaminated with methylene blue (RFK's preferred flavor of ink)
likebudda@reddthat.com · 14 pts · 1d
Giving the "C" students a chance to run the government has gone as expected.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 1d
you're giving the current government way too much credit. "C"s?
ouRKaoS@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 1d
The C is for "Cash," because that's what they gave to the schools in exchange for passing.
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
I'm too Statesian for that joke to land right dude. my wallet still hurts from my education.
ouRKaoS@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 1d
But just imagine:
If you gave the school more money, you could have gotten an "education" without doing all of that work!
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
i think i might have grewed up in that generation dude
tacosanonymous@mander.xyz · 10 pts · 1d
I said this to my wife and she asked “How?” My response was that RFK must be spinning a wheel. I still don’t know how tf they’ve done this.
Nonprophet@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 1d
Maybe it really stands for Make America Hungry Again... because there is nothing safe left for us to eat!!!
Danarchy@lemmy.nz · 7 pts · 1d
Which would be fine except the ink is contaminated with that Hungarian bloodshitting virus
ryannathans@aussie.zone · 2 pts · 1d
But what's the Hungarian bloodshitting virus contaminated with
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works · 2 pts · 1d
Tofu, apparently
CultLeader4Hire@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 1d
For anyone else curious it’s Chili Crisp Lightly Fried Tofu made by Hodo, and it impacts a lot of states
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 5 pts · 1d
well RFK jr drips methylene blue into his coffee, he wouldnt mind the ink.
expatriado@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
soy ink right?
UnLocoPoco@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
What's next? Cheese contaminated with fecal bacteria or smth idk
LadyMeow@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 1d
W o t
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 1d
At this point just switch to whole grains and make everything yourself. Buy whole wheat and make flour. Buy soybeans and make your own tofu and so on. They can't mess that up, can they?
chiliedogg@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 1d
Never challenge their ability to make things worse.
Zephyr@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 23h
Worse comes to worse there's decent local organic providers for a lot of things.
CalypsoGirl@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 18h
The FDA is gonna turn us all into hypervigilant food scientists.
KingPorkChop@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 1d
Canadian giggles
rumba@lemmy.zip · 2 pts · 1d
Sir(e), The public is rabble rousing because we defunded and dismantled the food protection departments.
FDA: OK, you're going to send out a new weekly email blocking something, anything so that we show we're providing food safety.
Sir(e), how do we know what to block and not to block?
FDA: I don't care really, make it random, make put it on a dart board. If you go to the store and see a package of tofu with the label on wrong, i don't care just report stuff and do it really often.
SaharaMaleikuhm@feddit.org · 2 pts · 1d
Deregulation <3
myyass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I've spent the last month spinning the wheel. Wake up paint the toilet bowel, go back to bed, get up again and paint the toilet bowel. And all I wanted was a salad. I don't recommend it.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
Boycott these companies.
CaptPretentious@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
How? Most of our food (in the US) is owned by what, a dozen different companies really? The only way to boycott is to starve to death.
LotrOrc@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 1d
I try to go to local farmers for all my produce now, have been for the past few years.
I know its not easy for everyone to do but that has to be the next step
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
I'm sorry that I don't have the answers. If shitty federal regulations are the only thing keeping these companies from killing us, they should be no longer in business. I didn't know how to do that.
Who regulated us into this mess?
TrickDacy@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 1d
Libertarian hogwash belongs on Shitter, not Lemmy.
Proprietary_Blend@lemmy.world · 0 pts · 1d
Along with my tax dollars
Hjalamanger@feddit.nu · 0 pts · 1d
Cases of tofu? Is tofu a disease or do i not understand English?
Soggy@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 1d
A "case" like a storage device. Like a box.
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · -1 pts · 1d
hell its got taste better