May 03, 2023 11:18 AM UTC

Boebert Co-Sponsors "Tainted Slider Protection Act"

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• by: Colorado Pols

A fresh and never frozen battle is brewing in Congress over the so-called PRIME Act, legislation that would allow some producers to directly sell meat products that have not been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture for safety to consumers and restaurants. As Dan Flynn writes for Food Safety News:

Food safety is reason enough to kill the Processing Revival and Interstate Meat Exemption Act, otherwise known as the PRIME Act, according to some of the industry’s most powerful players…

NCBA President Todd Wilkinson says the nation’s largest organization for the cattle industry “is in favor of reducing regulatory burdens, but not at the expense of food safety,” He calls the PRIME Act ” well-intentioned,” but allowing uninspected beef to enter the retail market is dangerous to consumers.

“American consumers rely on rigorous USDA inspection to ensure the safety and quality of their meat and poultry,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts. “Allowing the meat to enter commerce without inspection – and without alerting consumers they are buying uninspected meat — jeopardizes food safety and will undermine consumer confidence in all meat products.” [Pols emphasis]

Proponents of the PRIME Act argue that it will give consumers more local choices while giving ranchers new market options for their products. Opponents, who include most of the nation’s large meat producers, counter that the lack of inspection for these meat products will lead to outbreaks of foodborne disease.

There are arguments on both sides of this debate, but Colorado’s far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert’s original sponsorship of the PRIME Act creates its own ghastly message problems for supporters of this legislation. In Boebert’s previous career as a restauranteur in Rifle, as our readers know, a batch of “tainted” pork sliders her business cooked up for a local rodeo in 2017 sickened dozens of spectators with “Boebert’s Revenge,” also known as Clostridium perfringens. And during the early period of COVID-19, Boebert narrowly avoided losing her business license for defying public health orders.

It’s not the first time we’ve said this about Rep. Boebert…but could proponents of the PRIME Act have found a worse spokesperson for this particular issue if they tried?

We’d be hard-pressed to.