▪️The average person seeing this meme would assume the Trump Administration is removing safety regulations at the behest of big chicken, but that’s not at all what happened.
▪️There is no change in any rule, the poultry industry is still under the same regulations as they’ve been for decades. This was a proposed rule that has been withdrawn. There were over 7,000 public comments on the proposal, and the agency said:
🔹“the comments have raised several important issues that warrant further consideration. Therefore, FSIS is withdrawing the “Salmonella Framework for Raw Poultry Products” proposed rule and proposed determination to allow the Agency to further assess its approach for addressing Salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products.”
▪️Indeed, Pilgrim’s Pride was among one of the comments, but they agreed with the rule proposal! They were a little more nuanced, saying certain aspects should be modified and the implementation dates changed. But they were overall in support.
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FSIS-2023-0028-6982
▪️It was actually the small farm poultry producers that were most opposed to this change. As with most regulations, larger companies can more easily absorb the costs and are less affected.
▪️For example, one small (“women owned”) producer, called Towering Oaks Farms posted a comment opposed to the rule. She pointed out that this proposal would require small producers to test a much higher percentage of their chickens than large producers.
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/FSIS-2023-0028-7070
▪️She noted increased costs to comply could result in 40% of slaughter facilities closing, which would mean many small farms might not have access to compliant facilities. This would cause many small producers to discontinue poultry production, even make it so farmers can’t get their birds back for their own consumption!
▪️Other small producers posted similar comments. If anything, it appears this proposal was withdrawn more after listening to concerns of small farmers than large ones.
Here’s the Fox LA article referenced:
https://www.livenowfox.com/news/usda-salmonella-levels-raw-poultry-usda-withdraws-plan
▪️The left keeps using this meme but they don’t actually believe it. If you believe SNAP subsidizes companies to pay below a “living wage” this implies that if you take food stamps away they would suddenly pay a higher, “living” wage. So why not get rid of food stamps, then?!
▪️Except they know, and everyone knows, this isn’t true. Wages are set by supply and demand, not some mythical “living wage” metric. Absent food stamps there would actually be downward, not upward, pressure on wages, because the reality is food stamps subsidize the poor to not work as much as they might otherwise need to.
▪️Without SNAP, some low income people would need to work more hours to make ends meet, increasing the availability of low-skilled labor and lowering wages (all else being equal).
▪️Plus, we all know the left loves and supports food stamps. Which means, by this meme’s logic, they love to subsidize corporate profits. But they don’t really, they just think this ...
▪️Wait, this is the guy libertarians and the new right rave about being a great historian?! This sounds like a clueless meme from The Other 98%, except they wouldn’t add in the bizarre defense of feudal lords. Feudalism didn’t deprive peasants of their livelihoods for abstract goals? This is total fantasy.
▪️Amazon employs 1.55M, so this is less than 2% of their workforce, although these cuts will be to corporate, which employs 350k, so 8.5% of that. The CEO says there is an excess of bureaucracy at Amazon, and AI can automate certain repetitive tasks. Also, much of the cuts will be to HR, which is expected shrink by 15%, yay. Managers and HR are peasants now?
▪️I don’t know the inner workings of Amazon, and neither does Darryl, but this seems to be normal management practice to keep a company efficient and competitive. Given the immense size of Amazon the numbers look large, but far bigger shakeups happen all the time in the private sector. Apparently, under the new ...
▪️This statistic is just made up. The reality is that there hasn’t been a real study on this since 2013, when Pew did a poll. They found that Democrats were actually more than twice as likely as Republicans to report ever using food stamps (22% vs 10%).
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2013/07/12/the-politics-and-demographics-of-food-stamp-recipients/
▪️Obviously, those percentages could have changed over the past decade, but it’s very likely that Dems still receive more SNAP benefits. Certainly, without an actual study or poll the claim should be thrown out, as it wildly contradicts a previous study.
▪️The meme probably comes from a 2024 analysis by Social Explorer, which found that 78.7% of US counties with the largest increase in SNAP since 2010 voted for Trump in 2020. But that tells us nothing about the actual number of Republicans (or Democrats) who are receiving benefits, just county-wide trends.
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