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Comment by rqtwteye | Hacker News Reader

I think it’s ignorance and arrogance. The US seems to be on a path to lose technological and science leadership. The current leadership doesn’t seem to understand things that aren’t flashy. I wonder when they’ll dial back on food safety. I am sure RFK knows some vitamins that protect against salmonella

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important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries. can't wait to see what plague demon spawns out of a food industry running amok after the FDA gets gutted.

> important to note: the US's food safety is already really bad. salmonella isn't a thing you have to worry about in first world countries.

There were 65,000 cases of salmonellosis in the EU in the most recent data I could find (2022). Thats a lower per capita rate than the US, but definitely not zero.

I agree that it’s not zero, but according to CDC, the US sees about 1.35 million cases per year in a population of about 346 million, which is about 390 cases per 100,000 people. Your figure for the EU over a population of 447 million in 2022 gives 14.5 cases per 100,000 people, or more than a factor of 26 less.

Being 26 times less worried about something translates, at least for most things, for me, to not being worried about it any more.

That’s just not true.

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/15/nx...

At least American chicken is chlorinated:

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/15/nx...

From the the very article you linked

"The vast majority of chicken processed in the United States is not chilled in chlorine and hasn't been for quite a few years," says Dianna Bourassa, an applied poultry microbiologist at Auburn University, "So that's not the issue."

Salmonella and it causes are very regional in EU. Places like Finland have basically 0 cases of salmonella caused by domestic poultry products per year. If there salmonella is found from any chicken in the flock, the whole flock will be quarantined and generally fully slaughtered (meat & eggs must be pasteurized after the slaughter if they are sold). In 2023 0.1% of the tested flocks had salmonella.

According to https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11945640/ most of the outbreaks in humans (where exact cause was found) were caused by foreign vegetables.

On other hand countries like Italy find positive samples from 27% of their flocks ( https://efsa.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.2903/j.efsa... ). USA doesn't do testing at that level as far I understand, I only found that 8% of the tested chicken parts have salmonella (https://www.propublica.org/article/salmonella-chicken-usda-f...).

According to the radio this morning, they're currently working to close all the FDA branches that do food safety testing, so, good guess?

the guy is ultimate small gov. he wants to rip it out by the roots.

I don't think he's considered a small gov conservative. He increased spending last time and has continued so far this term. His tariffs are one of the biggest expansions in gov interference in modern history. They are also attempting to significantly expand executive power beyond even 9/11 terrorism days.

Small enough to fit in a uterus, big enough to kidnap and shoot citizens

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