Unions denigrate own product, destroy business

Once again, we see the federal meat inspectors union grinding its own axe at the expense of the public perception of the healthfulness and wholesomeness of beef.

Unions always need more members to pay dues and contribute political funds, so constantly seek more employees to be hired at each location they represent. So it is with the meat inspectors, who once again are scaring the wits out of the beef consuming public by decrying the shortage of union inspectors at packing plants.

With compliant liberal Democrats in charge of Congress, they allow the union activists to add a tissue of credibility to their wild charges by repeating them to congressional committees. Last week at the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, veteran union activist Stanley Painter, currently working for the meat graders union, painted a lurid picture of all manner of filth, lies and deceit that allegedly goes on in meat packing plants, all to expose the consuming public to evil health risks and gross eating adventures.

The bottom line is that Painter needs more than the 6,000 federal meat inspector members for his union kitty, both in terms of federal dues collections, rebated directly to the union coffers, and political action fund donations to support liberal members of Congress in their re-election bids. Any way he can scare members of Congress into helping him out by hiring more meat inspectors, he is not above doing it.

American beef is the most wholesome, carefully inspected in the world. American packing plants are the cleanest, most humane in the world. If Painter were an objective observer, he would go to packing plants in other countries, to see the abuses he's talking about, because they exist there. Not in America.

Just like the packing plant employee's unions, the federal meat inspectors have no fear of bombarding the beef consuming public with all manner of wild stories, whose only purpose is to club management into submission to the union's will. If beef sales go down, due to the adverse union-generated publicity, so be it.

The next time you read wild charges from union activists before Congress or in the press, take it with a grain of salt. Ask yourself what they're really after--and it has nothing to do with the cleanliness or wholesomeness of meat. They're only concerned with the healthfulness of the union bank account.