Kill the sea lions

I guess the only surprise in the hugest beef recall ever is that the federal government didn’t rush to the company’s rescue. Big business is obviously top priority these days, and when you look at the just-released list of products containing that funky beef it’s not hard to see why. A lot of companies can buy very little regulatory oversight: Beef possibly scraped off downer cows wound up in everything from spaghetti sauce to frozen breakfast burritos, 466 products in all. And if that doesn’t make you queasy, start wondering how sickening salmonella leached into the water supply in a Colorado town, and turned up on cantaloupe imported from Central America. (Or, as a clueless wire service reporter put it and endless outlets repeated, from “a Honduran manufacturer,” as if melons grew on assembly lines.) Too bad our protectors cannot clean up a problem as fast as they can convict and deport a Mexican for abusing cows. Or bail out crooks who shit where they bank.