Monday, February 25, 2013

Good Job, LA Dept of Health

Louisiana Forces Homeless Shelter to Destroy $8000 Worth of Deer Meat
Since we're discussing the bureaucracy in class, here's a great example of it failing.
$8000 of donated and perfectly edible deer meat was forced to be destroyed by the Louisiana Dept. of Health. Their reasoning is absolutely absurd (see the article), and the idea that you would rather have these people go hungry or be served less quality food because the animal was hunted is a disgrace.

5 comments:

  1. That...is really pathetic. People would think to use the meat even for something like this...but to waste it like that? That's just wrong and messed up. I understand that meat must be a certain quality, but if you already have hunted and killed that animals, you should be able to fix the meat to meet the requirements; not waste it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This is ridiculous. As we were talking about in class even if there is a law or presupposed idea of doing things, in this case it is up to the men of the Health Department to take the situation into account (that this meat was already supplied in large quantities,followed processing and packaging correctly). While the organization Hunters for Hungry wasn't previously recognized by the Health Dept. to be suitable, it had donated food much needed by the homeless, and in this case the food being received by the hungry is more important than petty restrictions.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Lauren said it perfectly. Hunger trumps petty restrictions... or at least it should. Those people need that food and the Health Department seems to overstep some boundaries here.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This should be a case where the bureaucracy stepped in and sidestepped general policy to help the public. Unfortunately, rather the reverse happened. Although they likely believed they were "doing their jobs", $8,000 of deer meet is a lot to anyone, let alone an organization that gives food to those who are unable to afford it on their own. That being said, it is easy to criticize the bureaucracy with the amount of information given in the article, but there may be more information left out that explains in detail the Department of Health's concerns.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I'm just happy to see that people are atleast controlling the deer population and would prefer to get the premium meat (because frankly there are way too many deer). If you had been that person to get the meat, you would want the best right? Doesn't seem that wasteful to me, just a little picky.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.