No Inspections, More Pathogens

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1:12This is the Tom Harbin Program. My daily take today over HarbinRaport.com is titled, a Brazilian meat billionaire walked into Trump's Oval Office. What happened next should terrify us all. And you know it's the story of, first of all, there are four companies that control the vast majority of all meat sold in the United States. Two of those companies are based out of Brazil. One of them is run by this guy who walked into Trump's office. This is after Eric Schlosser in the New York Times on Monday pointed out that when you buy a car you get to know where it was made. If you buy a t-shirt, it tells you that it's 100% cotton made in Bangladesh or whatever. The same is true of your peas and carrots and chicken and fish and everything else. You have the right to know where it came from and what's in it. Not true for beef or pork. Weirdly enough. I mean, there's a whole story to tell here.

2:13Schlosser says that there's 200 million tons of ground beef that Trump is going to, or beef that Trump is going to bring into the country, is probably going to be mostly old frozen beef that's like been in lockers in other countries. And much of it may be coming from Brazil. We don't really know, but the Wall Street Journal reported last week that on August 30th, Jose Lee Batista, the Brazilian billionaire who controls, co-controls JBS. This is one of the four biggest meat companies in the United States. It's a Brazilian owned company. This is actually the largest meat packer on earth. He had a private meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. And the next day Trump announced his, we're going to bring hundreds of millions of pounds of beef into the United States, and I'm not going to tell you where it's coming from. He also, in his proclamation, he said that this beef coming in, this 300,000 metric tons

3:16of foreign beef is in the other country's quota category. In other words, it will be free of tariffs. This is the same guy, this Batista guy. This is the same guy who, along with his brother in 2017, confessed to bribing roughly 1800 Brazilian officials to not examine their meat products. The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department find them in their country's $280 million under the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act. In part, for bribes here in America that they used in their acquisition of Pilgrims Pride, the big American chicken company. The SEC called their conduct a profound failure of corporate governance and blocked them for almost a decade from being listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Then Pilgrims Pride wrote a $5 million check to Donald Trump to his inaugural fund, much of which he kept. It was the single largest corporate donation, five times that of Amazon or Meta.

4:20And Trump suspended enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practice Act against JBS. He said, we're not going to go after this company anymore. Two days after that became public, the SEC, Trump's SEC approved the stock market listing and began trading on the NYC, the New York Stock Exchange. And now the company's own co-owner walks into the White House and suddenly we're buying all kinds of beef from them. We don't know. He's just to say, Brook Rallons, who's our agriculture secretary, has no experience in agriculture or public health or anything. I mean, she was a right wing propagandist for years and a hardcore right wing Christian fundamentalist evangelist, says, I don't have a clue. I don't know. Right. Most of us spent most of our lives feeling like our food supply was safe. You know, I mentioned the article I used to do International Relief Work and the thing that scared me when I was in the slums of Bogota or Manila or whatever was not the possibility

5:25of crime. Interestingly enough, poor communities, I mean, deeply, these deeply poverty-stricken communities tend to police themselves and they tend to be very protective of relief workers who come in to help them out. My biggest fear was eating something that would give me a brainworm or rip my guts apart, which actually did happen to me in 2001. So when I got GRD, it was not. No fun at all. And that was outside the United States, of course. But I had always assumed that my food was safe here in the United States. And in 1906, up to Sinclair published this book, The Jungle, This Novel, about the meat-packing industry in Chicago. And it created such a stir that that same year it came out, Teddy Roosevelt was president and he signed legislation that it ultimately created the, it was called the Pure Food and

6:27Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act. He signed both of them on the same day and they created the USDA Inspection System and ultimately the Food and Drug Administration. And 102 years later in 2008, Congress added mandatory country of origin labels for meat. So you think we would know where it comes from, right? But then in 2010, five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized bribery. The meat-packers lobbyists swarmed DC and in December of 2015, Congress quietly repealed the labels for beef and pork by tacking that repeal into a 2000 page omnibus spending bill. Triggered in lamb still carry the label. But your hamburger is now mystery meat. And then there's Bob Kennedy, you know, the one-time heroin-addicted lawyer with no medical or scientific training whatsoever who promised to make America healthy again. In April of last year, he announced 10,000 layoffs across federal health agencies including

7:273,500 of the Food and Drug Administration. The AP reports that the fired staff included lab scientists who tested foods for contamination. And communication specialists whose job is to tell us when our food is dangerous. And now Bob, his budget, his proposed budget wants to shift routine food inspections out of the hands of the feds and onto the states, which basically can't afford to do it. At the same time that a Republican Congress is suggesting a 60% cut in money to help pay for state inspections. And the result of all this? Well, in 2024 under Joe Biden, 77% of the food outbreaks, the disease outbreaks that we had in the United States that were associated with food, the source was identified, 77%. In 2025, in 2025, Donald Trump's year, that fell to a shocking 36%. And then there's this rule that would have made it possible for the FDA to find the source

8:30of contamination in eggs or lettuce or whatever. Within 24 hours, Congress wrote that into law in 2011. The FDA put it in, it was going to implement it in 2022 or finish the rule in 2022. And it was set to automatically take effect back nine months ago in January. But after the grocery lobby complained and presumably made some well-placed donations to Republican politicians, Bob Kennedy's FDA pushed that rule back to July of 2028. So no inspections. And you can see this in the official numbers. We've got 18,000 concerned cases in 49 states of cyclospora and 990 hospitalizations and two deaths. And it's not just pathogens, by the way. Bob is letting the toxic PFAS chemicals be dumped into our food supply and our drinking water go without inspection. I mean, this is what you get with 45 years of Republicans telling you the government is the problem.

9:31And that, you know, we need to do away with the nanny state. No more of these inspections and bureaucrats and deep state and all this other kind of BS that Republicans try to shovel at us. And the result is, you know, when your TV breaks, you buy a new TV, but when your food supply breaks, your kid ends up in the hospital. And that's what Trump and Kennedy have brought us. George and cripple Creek Virginia, George. What's on your mind today? George, I was in the Arctic and West, yesterday. Well, good. Shield and dreams, how European allies are blocking US ambitions in Greenland. So I could say, the Arctic shield is taking place between 7 and 18 September and involves Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Canada, France, Belgium, Holland, Germany, Slovenia, Poland, and the official part of the exercise is to practice allied cooperation and challenging Arctic conditions and strengthening NATO capabilities in the Arctic.

10:35But unofficially, according to his vestia, it's to really response to Trump's claim that the US and not Denmark should control Greenland and to demonstrate NATO is resolved to defend Greenland and demonstrate its ability to operate without the US. Sounds interesting. I think that's an accurate analysis, don't you? I do, yeah, definitely. Because the US is not involved in the exercise and the exercise involves sending 400 troops to Greenland to show NATO resolve. I think the more Trump's in the office, the more NATO is going to defend Europe on its own hook. The damage that this one man has done to our country to, you know, it took us 250 years to build this extraordinary reputation, to build an international alliance, to stand up to fascists and communists and actually make a country that could improve the quality of life of everybody. And you know, Trump and his GOP buddies have just taken us down.

11:41I mean, it's just astonishing to me, George. It's just astonishing. What's most astonishing is that Republican. It takes a long time to build things up, but a short time to tear them down. Yep. And, you know, I remember, you know, my dad giving me a copy of John Stormers book, the under-call it, Treeson, you know, back in, I don't know, it must have been like an interesting thing. Right, yeah. I knew something. I was really young. And I read that book and I thought, oh my God, the State Department is filled with communists and, you know, I just can't. I can't imagine any of those guys that my dad hung out with, those Republicans, you know, Sirius R. Quarer Republicans who hated communism and were terrified of the Russians and whatnot. If he was alive today, and I just can't imagine what he would say about, well, I can't imagine. It wouldn't be something I could repeat on the radio. The fight rate saved my dad. It was an Eisenhower Republican. Yeah, my dad too. Yeah. Although he did, you know, he did get very enthusiastic about very goldwater.

12:43And he really always considered himself an Eisenhower Republican. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, I just read in interest in Wukkel, Law's Empire of Manual Noble. Roman Law's revolutionaries and the Vagat and Titan who fueled the world by Dougal Sprunt. And he grew the Russian oil industry into such a state that even surpassed Shady Rockefeller standard oil. But a little interesting, tight tidbit in that book is Lenin and Stalin's chef was a guy named spirit on Putin. And now his grandson is the dictator in the Kremlin. Really? Wow. Do you believe that? Yeah. That's remarkable. He's glad father was Lenin and Stalin's chef. That's incredible. The world continues to amaze me. George, thank you for sharing that. Thanks for the call. It's great to hear from you. You've got the good work, Tom. Back edge, your brother. David, in Edmund's Washington, hey, David, what's on your mind today? Just make a comment about Jared and this, I'd take going to a Kiev and trying to do some

13:47sort of a peace talk. What did you see when Putin said after their visit to Russia? Putin said that they were discussing business deals, potential business deals between their families in Russia and the United States. Probably. That's what Putin said. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, didn't have anything to do with peace. No. I mean, you know, if if if jump wanted to negotiate peace, he'd send a secretary of state. Instead, he sent a billionaire real estate, he sent two billionaire real estate developers. And Putin is like, yeah, we talked about developing real estate. What a shock. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. I hadn't heard what came of that. So I pretty much don't know. It's on draw drum now. Yeah. Oh, okay. Well, one of the things that the reason why I love civilinsky, and I think the reason why a lot of people love the Solansky is because he will make no peace with evil. And that's what I was calling about was the evils of Russia and one of the greatest

14:49evils that they've been perpetrating on the on the world has been child trafficking, human trafficking and they've stole so many children. Putin has stolen over 100,000 children from the Ukraine and God only knows where they are. What's being done with them? And it's one of the few countries where child pornography is not illegal. And documentation of the horrors of what they're putting these children through is is available now. And it's really it's really education camps. Yep. So RayZome, Ukraine defense support, a number of the groups, several other groups that support Ukraine are putting together a presentation in Olympia at the Washington State Capitol campus down the campus near the Tbilisi, Fountain. And it's going to be tomorrow at 12 noon on September night to 12 noon and show up and please help bring Ukrainian children home and keep it in everyone's mind that this is

15:52something that has to be taken care of. Great announcement, David. Thank you. Public service announcement. I hope you have a great turn out tomorrow. Thanks for the call. Yeah, great. Thank you. All right. Thank you, sir. Michael and Anchorage Alaska. Hey, Michael, what's up? I have a proposal for the American people. It's going to be like trying to overturn the 27th amendment. We need to have a new amendment stating that the people can rise up and vote for impeachment. But it's got to be a three-part impeachment. It's got to be the president, the vice president, and the speaker of the house. And there's got to be a non-violent. It's got to be ready. This man's driving us into what all these billionaire corporations that believe that they have the power of the 27th amendment behind them to vote and to put money into our system. Money is not going to change anything. Money is only going to drive people insane because they don't have enough.

16:56Yeah. That's just... I get it, Michael. It's a sweet idea. It ain't going to happen, but it's a sweet idea. Thank you very much. Steve and Phoenix, Arizona. Steve, what's up? I'd like to mention about the lady that called in. She was right about our base as being called. They had the meeting of Camp David at the White House, first of all, which is pretty treasonous with the Taliban. And I think they closed everything except Bagram. And you were set up to fail. But I want to talk about Trump and this harpy of his putting up these flags all over the continents, South America, Central America, Greenland Island and all that. I believe Putin has said that he wants to carve up the world into three-three separate spheres of influence. That's right. Exactly. Europe for Putin, Asia for Xi and the South Pacific and the Americas for Trump.

17:57So all Donald is doing. He's just going with what Trump and Putin is told him to do. And he's all down with it. And I think he's just looking at the cat out of the bag. What's going to happen if we don't get the Congress on the Senate? What do you think, Tom? I think you're absolutely right, Steve. I don't think it's going to happen because our law is a little more complex than that. We're not yet a dictatorship. We may be in January. We'll have to wait and see. But you're absolutely right. Putin has said this on multiple occasions that we should have a tri-polar world spot on. Thank you. Patrick and I earned to know, Hiho. Hey, Patrick, what's on your mind today? I was just wondering and I haven't had a chance to eat, David, but I understand that death benefits have been denied to the 18 military families. To the families. Yeah. Because this is, quote, not a war. And the reason that the Trump and Vance are saying it's not a war is because they don't want to be regulated by Congress. Can't that be sub-diffused because they were military individuals that were deployed

19:01by our president? Yeah, that doesn't make it a war. I mean, the fact of the matter is the last war that we actually declared as a war was the World War II. Very true, and started this whole police action thing with South Korea, the Korean War, and then Johnson and Nixon put it on steroids with Vietnam. It's, you know, we've got to get back to Congress declaring wars. I mean, it's just that simple. And this is just another example of how wrong this is. I think though that what the Trump administration is doing and trying to deprive these families of their benefits is even going beyond what we did for Vietnam veterans and Iraq war veterans. So we'll see Patrick, thank you for the call. It's an important point to many. Chris and little in Colorado, hey, Chris, what's up? The Republican draft is in December. They're going to put an automatic draft in for anybody 18 to 12 years.

20:05I don't think they have to. As long as they can keep the minimum wage is 725 an hour and half the states in the country, you're going to have such deep poverty in America that, you know, Jefferson said this was his nightmare. He said, I hope I shall never live to see the day that the young men of my country are willing to be shot at for a six pence. And that's exactly what we've got right now. We're not out of Iran yet. Nope. No, but we don't need to. Also, they will in Medicaid in December unless we vote them out in the midterm election. Well, they cut 10 million out of it. And those cuts go into effect in December. You say, I thought they went into effect in January, but anyhow, right around the end of the year. And so next year, there's going to be some real pain and some real, you know, yellow. They didn't want to do that before the midterms. Exactly. Now, my second point is, Taco Trump always chickens out.

21:05He's a five time draft dodging coward. Yeah. If the people show up and vote in the midterms and elect good new leaders, we can save democracy in our own future. High, great. And biggest, biggest thing anybody can do to improve their own futures to vote in the midterms. I'm with you. Chris, thank you. Well said. Roger and Seattle, hey, Roger, what's on your body today? I grew up in DC and my cousin actually was on the staff of the first DC rep. But anyway, if you do something like the January capital riot, you might be assaulting mainly in the case of most of the people that were either committed suicide or actually went to court, capital police, but they're park service, the DC Metro, the FBI, and then probably three or four other police units so that in any other part of the 50 states, I doubt

22:07whether they have that many people in one police or one little area. But the city does have its own city officers. Yeah, but I think it was mainly the capital police that suffered to the injuries. That was. Although Michael Phenone, the guy who had the heart attack from being tased over and over again, he was a city cop. In fact, he was, I think he was a narcotics cop, but he showed up. He just was there. He just said, I'll pitch in. So what I'm hoping you as a professional in the media, can you publicize that, let's get AOC and Bernie and Warren and my mayor and the New York City mayor to be part of the official democratic response to this Dallas, Assinine propaganda campaign so that we, you know, while we're laughing at the elephant butt of jokes, let's see if we can do an eye for an eye and not the nice guy, democratic, where are the democratic responses?

23:14You know, so if we do the eye and eye for an eye like Netanyahu and the Hitler Trump Christians want to do all the time. Then we might be able to talk about the cliche, look out for the $100 gallon, $100 fill up. When you talk about $5 gallon, $6 gallon, people then have to figure out, do I have 20 gallons in my car? Do I have 10 gallons? When they say $150 a fill up, that'll get their attention. Yeah. No, I saw a funny cartoon over the weekend that had a mega guy, you know, with a mega hat on. Go on that Donald Trump. He's just amazing, you know, before he came into office, my car, my truck held $44 worth of gasoline. Now it holds $150 worth of gasoline. That guy's amazing. Yeah, no, I'm with it Roger and I have a feeling after November or maybe after January, you're going to see some real fireworks coming out of DC. It's going to get wild.

24:14Well, as we've talked about, let's see if we can get this guy impeached before November, right? I didn't going to happen, but, but, you know, it's not that far down the road. I mean, we've just a couple of months away from January. I'm with you, Roger. Thank you. Don and Applegate, California. Hey, Don, what's on your mind today? Getting back to 25th Amendment. I particularly want to focus on that because before I retired, I was geriatric cycle therapist, specializing in dementia assessment treatment. I really do know where I speak. I've been telling people for the longest time, he's gay, showing, you know, just an addictive dementia symptoms. And no one would believe that. For example, but it seems like, yeah, well, not knowing where he is, what time it is, following the sleep in the afternoon, the, you know, word salads and different things like that. I mean, besides the fact that he already has narcissistic narcissistic and psychopathic

25:18and personality disorders, he's showing all of it down to the point where people who question me before are not questioning quite as much. He's going, well, maybe he does. But I have a question. If someone, if when we get the midterms over in, and the Democrats, and I'm being positive, are able to be in the, have more Democrats and Republicans, if the House and or Senate decide to go the route, the 25th Amendment, will that, is that able to take place unless JD Vance cooperates with that? I'm not sure. There is a provision in the 25th Amendment that says that Congress or on other agency can produce the initial document necessary to execute the 25th Amendment. The normal procedure would be the Vice President and the Cabinet, but there is a way around that. How practical that is, I don't know.

26:19I'm skeptical. Yeah, I would like to find out more about that. So if you do find out more, would you mind talking about it on your show? I would be happy to. And we'll keep an eye out for somebody who might be an expert on that. I just don't, you know, we're going to have to wait until January for anything like that, I believe, but it should be a possibility. Kathy, thank you for the call. Judy and Chicago, hey, Judy, what's on your mind today? About the Israeli flag. You went back to it because as soon as I heard it, I was like, well, I knew that when it first happened. Yeah. You know, it was reported, but it hadn't been confirmed. Now it's been confirmed by the President of the UAE himself, I believe. No, okay, because it's been driving me crazy. This is what I want everybody to when there's a story, like take a screenshot of it, you know, like save things because when you see these things added up, the news media doesn't

27:24go in and like put it all together and or even investigate things, you know, like regarding the 2020 election or COVID or whatever. And it's just driving me crazy. But about the Israeli thing, when I first heard about it, I actually, this was painful, but I went and started listening to Charlie Kirk's web, what he called his podcast. Yeah. And he was coming. I'm not reading it from somebody else. He was saying the same thing from his own mouth. I've got that. Yeah, who knew this was coming and figured it would work to his benefit. He actually, I mean, you know, now who had pulled out the soldiers around there. That's right. I mean, it was like, it was like he said, hey, come on in. Uh-huh. And then also Charlie Kirk said it took 48 hours before he sent troops to help the people. Yeah, I don't think it was 48 hours.

28:25I think it was more like six or seven, but yeah. Okay. And then he also started saying that Gaza was a genocide and that Epstein was, yes, I from his, I'm not reading it from somebody else. I actually took the time and watched him. And he said Epstein was part of a mess. And then you know what happened to him. So, well, that is increasingly becoming public knowledge that Epstein was both working with CIA and Mossab. Yeah. Remarkable stuff. Yeah. Sure he thanks for the call. Yeah. Sandra and Oma Hanna Braska, hey, Sandra, what's on your mind today? Well, I noticed a pattern in who Republicans choose to represent them. Uh-huh. Nixon reps promised a bonus. If Vietnam would just get those peace negotiations, they'll be J. Yes. Just a laugh to the election. Reagan reps promised Iranian was a bonus. If they'd hold off on releasing those hostages, just after the election, George Bush squeaked

29:30by with his five or many of them votes. Well, Catherine Harris was also his personal campaign manager, as well as the person who controls voter certification rules in Florida. So, that might have helped Donald Trump made an agreement with a Taliban and the war in Afghanistan. But that would only go into effect after he was out of office. And then he proceeded to close down over 10 military bases and reduced troop levels to appoint the Afghan government was basically on the edge of collapse. Yeah. And so when Biden was in office, Kabul fell, and suddenly everyone had to get out immediately. Yeah. So it looked like Biden didn't know what he was doing. Yeah. And I'm just wondering at what point do Republicans admit? The truth is, is their go-to election, because every one of them was committing treason against a sitting president. That's a great point. Every day I'm one of them. That's a great point. I had forgotten about the Afghan. He shut down nine out of a 10 U.S. Air Force bases that we had there.

30:32Well, they were like, they were over 10, but major ones probably 10. Yeah. And he shut them down, left two to handle everything else. And then Kabul fell. Right. Yeah. Excellent point, Sam. He created chaos. Excellent point. I, you know, I get it. I get it. I get it. Your question was rhetorical, but I am. No, I think Republicans don't realize they are seen as traitors by the rest of us. Yeah. And that, that monitor will not fade fast. I, I agree. And what I'm waiting for is for the Democrats to start talking like you're talking. Sandra, thank you for the panel. That was an important one. I appreciate it. All right. Thank you. Katie and Humboldt, California. Hey, Katie, what's up? I'm, I'm voting for Bat Crawler. Yeah. I want to see that kind of energy. That's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's Yeah. I was, I, I got to the Saturday meeting late and I was going to ask this question. But Matteo said, it's still sort of anything goes. And it's, I read an article in the intercept, which I donate to.

31:33And it shook me up as far as I couldn't understand what they were talking. I, they're victory all about raise a gate. It's the first line in this article is Alexander Venman lost and Nixon and Florida Democratic Sanitorial primary and Tuesday making a long overdue into the worst liberal mass delusions of the Trump era, Colin Reishigade. Right. So as I said to Mateo, I know the intercept tends to be a bunch of kids that are too cool for school, but it's a very interesting site. You know, they're just gloating and over the, I mean, I don't care that George Conway or Dan Goldman lost my personal, I wouldn't have voted for him. But it's, well, can you explain what this, are they saying, you know, is this the mindset of the, there is a small sub-series on the intercept. Yeah. There was no interference.

32:33Yeah, there is a small subset of so-called left-wingers who are very, very pro-pood. And, you know, some of them used to be on RT, some of them have long histories with Russia. Well, is that the ban of the intercept? I can't, I don't know. I, you know, I frankly haven't read the intercept in several years, so I can't speak to that, Katie, I'm sorry. But from what you're describing, it certainly sounds like whether I just don't know. So I can't say. Katie, thanks for the call.