The cheese and listeriosis issue

Well if you have read the previous blogs about listeriosis, you should remember that I saw the cheese issue was a knee-jerk reaction. As in when the meat infection spread was known to have been caused by a slow response time based upon the existing evidence.... the cheese infection was a super quick response time based upon non-existing evidence. For the meat, we "knew" that X products were infected and we slowly had a recall. For the cheese, we "assumed" that X products were infected and we promptly destroyed the whole batch.

The retail store owners are upset and have lost quite a bit of money. They are not requesting compensation, they are demanding it. Their argument? The inspectors were told that 3 brands out of several dozens were infected, so the inspectors decided to destroy all the brands of cheeses without verification. The store owners pleaded to place the other brands in a special refrigerator so that they could each be tested for the infection. If the infection was there, then they would agree to destroy it (common sense). The government inspectors, from a bureaucratic mindset, could not understand the request.... they had one task: do a show of force to eliminate public fears; forget evidence, forget common sense, just do something, anything to demonstrate that they have controlled the listeriosis infection in the cheese. Avoid a repeat of the meat infection. No thinking, just reaction.

Naturally, the store owners want compensation for destroying cheeses that were not proven to be infected. How does the government bureaucracy respond to this? They make a statement that the government is not in the habit of providing insurance when the merchants lose products through a disaster, in this case, a listeriosis infection. That would be like a firefighter who decides to fight a house fire accross the street from your house, decides to run accross the street towards your house, busts down your door, sprays your entire house down with water ruining your furniture and electronic devices. When you point out to him that your house did not have a fire and that you demand compensation for his act of vandalism, he answers: "Fire departments do not compensate a person who has water damage from fighting a fire." Can you be any more brain dead than that as a bureaucracy? This proves that they are not listening to the complaint. The merchants do not want to be compensated for the listeriosis infected cheeses that were destroyed, they want to be compensated for the perfectly intact cheeses that were not infected but were destroyed nonetheless.

The government bureaucracy would then say "how do you know they were not infected?" To which the merchant would say: "how do you know that they were?" The merchant offered a proposal to verify but the inspectors rejected the proposal.... probably because it would have cost the government too much money to inspect, instead they stole from the store owners and now they don't want to admit their crime. As much as it is interesting to know that there is an independent judicial branch in the government to arbitrate between the brainless bureaucracy and the unfortunate merchant.... I find it sad that it even reaches that stage. Its pretty obvious who is at fault, we don't need to spend more money in the courts to deal with this.

Alternative argument: if the cleaning and cutting areas were not properly controlled environments, then the solution was to fine the owners and publicly state that the store did not proceed in the proper procedures. Destroying the cheeses was not the solution, at least not until the verification was made to prove an infection. If the merchant did in fact have improper storage or improper cleaning methods, inform the public and fine the merchant. Remember, use proper judgment and punish harshly deliberate incompetence. If the merchant is at fault, destroy his reputation and explain why he is at fault. If the bureaucratic machine is at fault, then they bloody well must compensate such a foolish act, moreso if they wasted the time of the courts. Human judgment should prevail, not written regulations that can never see the entire issue. If humans can err, how much more can rules written by humans err? There is no way you can cover every possibility imaginable with a written rule. The rule can only be a mnemonic device to help point you in the right direction of where you should go in any given situation.

Exercise for my readers: Try to write a training manual on how to ride a bicycle. Try to cover as many possible outcomes as you can. Then ask someone if they can read your manual and have acquired the skill of riding a bicycle from just reading your instructions. (If you succeed, submit your brilliance to scientific journals as you will have been the first human ever to succeed such a task).

Rules guide, they do not command us. Bureaucrats are expected to have the rules command them and this is a bad road to take. The two listeriosis cases, the meat and the cheese, were caused by this wrong direction. Even if both were opposite actions to each other, one was a lack of action, and the other was a very firm reaction.... both suffered from a lack of human judgment and both followed bureaucratic procedures.

Canadian Elections

Well apparently we are in election panic. Since today, I have not thought about something useful for society, I may as well join in the fun of the election stampede. Looking over some blogs written by others about the listeriosis issue, I saw how some are turning the deaths of these victims as a political issue and blaming the current government in charge. Think about it for 3 seconds.... our country is like a ship at sea and we have traditions that have been implemented for cleaning and repairing the engine while out at sea. Over the generations, we have gone from cleaning and repairing the engine on a daily basis to cleaning and repairing on a weekly basis. Why? Well because we can put the cleaners/repairers to better use and we play the odds that the engine will not need to be cleaned or repaired daily. The typical capitalist mindset: do more with less: you know what I mean, give half the daily food required to the Olympic athlete so that he can outperform last year's results.

This metaphorical ship goes out and changes captains on a monthly basis, we call this elections. The engine goes kaboom and we want to blame the current captain? Foolishness! It doesn't matter who would have been at the helm of this ship, since the underlying tradition was not changed. The captain still follows the traditions set out by the culture of the ship, otherwise he wouldn't be captain. I blame the culture of moving without thinking, the "lets not take the time to do the job correct but lets get the job done fast, irrelevant of the quality" way. Blaming the current government for listeriosis is playing childish games of "my daddy wouldn't allow his car to get wet while it rained if he drove outside!" (variation of "my daddy is bigger than your daddy").

This election stampede is enough to get any thinker angry. We keep hearing foolishness coming out of the mouths of those who wish to be elected.... I guess its the nature of the beast to use rhetoric and sound like you are speaking truthfully by playing with the emotional assumptions of people.

Case#1-->Harper takes accurate quotes from Dion and pokes fun at them. Dion says he is misquoted but never explains his thoughts, he never corrects the quotes. He just tries to deny his own message. Dion takes a misspelled word in one of Harper's messages and gleefully points out that we should not trust someone who is bad at spelling. Harper apologizes for bad grammar and admits his fault, Dion claims to accept the apology, but still insists on pointing out the admitted gaffe.

Case#2-->A one issue party claims that other leaders are afraid to have a televised debate with her which is why they refuse to have her in the debate.... no one ever bothers to think for 3 seconds to see how the system really works as to why a one issue party may be vetoed (right or wrong reasons is not the point, rather what the actual reason may be, is the point).... If anything, this one issue party will only take away votes from other like-minded parties.... to the benefit of the Conservatives.

Case#3-->Duceppe is treating Harper like he is a Dion. Dion had used the baseball bat against Quebec complaints: "If you dare talk about seperation, we will use this bat against you." Harper, on the other hand was conciliatory: "How do we work together as Canadians to solve your complaints?". Duceppe can no longer talk credibly about Canada being a bully against Quebec, yet he still tries. Duceppe is now trying the strategy of "because we are different, we must refuse to work on a consensus with others" (which will not work well). Before the strategy was: "we are different and they don't want to have any type of consensus with us", this worked because Dion so beautifully reminded everyone of his "baseball bat".

Case#4-->NDP using fear tactics to try to link Harper with soft-core fascism?!

From the perspective of someone just watching the news as an outsider, ignoring the often foolish advice given by the experts, I would say that the Conservatives will win with a very small majority. The Liberals will lose seats. The Bloc will lose seats. The NDP will gain seats and may even surpass the Liberals. The Green will have about 3 seats but not for the leader.

Well that's my perspective from the first week of election's stampede.

Knee-jerk Reactions

Now that we have had the listeriosis accident with the meat and that we have had shock and surprise that such things can still happen in the 21st century, there is now a new development in the news. Listeriosis was found in some of the locally produced cheeses in the province of Quebec (that's in Canada and a "province" is like a "state" in the U.S.). Now we come to the opposite extreme of do nothing with existing protocols, which is based upon a lack of judgment and a refusal to think about an issue; and we decide to throw out all the cheeses found, in case they may have been contaminated.

Both situations indicate move before thinking, a shoot before asking questions type of scenario. The unfortunate knee-jerk reaction. We get the listeriosis because we want to move too quickly and get the product out there before the competitor (see previous blogs for the rationale of that argument); then when a product is discovered to be infected with listeriosis, we throw everything out with no verification because we want to move too quickly to reassure non-thinkers that the situation is under control. Lets throw the baby out with the dirty bathwater, no thinking required: bathwater dirty-->throw out contents of bath!

There was a limited number of cheese brands that fell in the category of the infection and the government inspectors decided to include all the cheese and destroy it all in one shot. Store owners were prepared to destroy the identified infected cheeses but tried to talk sense in the government inspectors to at least test the other unrelated products before throwing them out. Were the other cheeses infected? Who knows? But the decision assumed that they were all infected and needed to be destroyed. Again, a loss of valuable resources for the same reason: move quicker than what your brain can react to.

The actions of allowing listeriosis products to go onto the marketplace and the actions of destroying ALL products that were found in the same store as a FEW contaminated products are opposite extremes. Both ridiculous extremes, both show a lack of judgment and both based upon not wanting to think things out first.

If we drive down a highway and see a deer on the road, the better reaction is to slow down and bypass the deer. Some would prefer to ignore the deer and plough on through with the deadly consequences as we have seen with the meat infection. Others would prefer to get off the road altogether and drive through the wilderness because if the deer is on the road it aint in the wilderness. If people can't drive properly and either ignore the deer or decide to go on treks through the wilderness (both damaging the car beyond repair), why do we still allow them access to the controls? Give the controls of the car to someone who has better judgment, yes?

One last thing, if the driver slows down to consult a bureaucratic manual to make a decision about the deer then it shows that he is under training and this better be a car-simulator (we may not have the luxury to consult the regulation for every new situation that comes up, this person may be better suited to be in the co-pilot's seat until he can ignore the regulations and use his proper judgment to make snap decisions which will then be included in the updated regulations for the next trainee).

Stop and Think

The listeriosis infection and the inability to stop it in time from killing a dozen people should make us all pause and contemplate. We could have avoided this accident easily but since we are more concerned with perceptions than actual realities, we will always suffer such nonsense. Consider this, no matter where you work, you will find that what is advertised to the public at large and what actually goes on behind closed doors is always different. How many times have you said to yourself or to co-workers at your job that if the public at large knew what was really going on at your work they would be in an uproar. Then when something happens in some other industry than your own, you act surprised at the level of incompetence there. If there are foolish things in your work environment, do not be surprised to find out that other industries have their foolishness and that they were unlucky to have it blow up in their faces.

Listeriosis is but one symptom in one specific industry, what about the tazer death in the airport with the security team walking in and killing a frustrated tourist who had not had anything to eat for over 8 hours in a completely alien environment? What was the public told after this death before the video evidence was available to the public? What about Enron and its sudden financial downfall? There are many situations like this that happen and I believe that these happen because there is little respect for someone to stop, think and implement.

We are on a metaphorical boat that is taking on water through a hole. We will eventually sink if we do nothing. The hole is small and will get bigger if the boat acquires more water. The amount that comes in is 1.1 gallons. We have a bucket that can get rid of 1 gallon at a time. So we struggle with great speed and for every 1.1 gallons that comes onto the boat, we throw 1 gallon back into the sea. We don't seem to notice that more and more water is getting in and we keep working fast and hard. Much like the frog who avoids boiling water but will stay in a pot of water as it slowly reaches the boiling point, we don't see that the boat is getting more and more water which slowly enlarges the existing hole. My proposal would seem absurd and counter-intuitive and many would just discount my following suggestion as laziness.... but my proposal would be to stop using the bucket for a few moments and think of a way to plug in the hole. I agree that while we think, the boat will have acquired a few hundred gallons, but once we have the solution, we stop the flow completely and then we get rid of the existing water with the bucket, or think a bit more and find an easier way to get rid of this water. The boat can probably take about 10 thousand gallons before it sinks so we have a bit of luxury of time to find a solution.

I propose we work smarter, not harder. Society's thinkers are often ignored and mocked. We discourage true thinking in society, we encourage memorization of techniques, we discourage questions. Had I been a worker in the meat plant, I would have asked "Shouldn't we test to see if the food was poisoned because the workstation was infected, the food may also have been infected?" This would have been answered with condescension that the procedures exist to avoid such things and that as a non-decision-maker I should not ask questions but follow the existing procedures. How many of us have had similar experiences in our personal workplace? I sincerely hope your workplace is not the next accident where the rest of us will shake our heads and mock the "other guy" and his incompetencies. Last year was Enron, last week was the tazer death, today its listeriosis.... what industry will have its foolishness blow up in its face next?

Incompetence or too busy?

The latest news on the listeriosis situation: after having been warned in the media about the meat recall and how everyone should avoid any meat that was processed in a specific plant, which is easily identifiable with the code "97B", we still find corner stores with the banned product on their shelves. Ignorance is the excuse given, they just didn't know that these particular products were part of the ban because they were not told.

Granted, we may not necessarily take everything the news has to say as absolute truth, but for at least two weeks we have had the code "97B" as the one thing to look for on any meat product, including the beef jerky type products found on the countertops of local convenience stores. Did the owner think that somehow these products were not considered meat? Its easy to say that incompetence is the culprit, but let us apply the theories of the September 1 and 2 posts onto this situation.

The convenience store clerk is overworked, so he is rushing to serve customers, stocking shelves, preventing shoplifting and cleaning. The owner is not much better off because since he has reduced his staff to stay competitive, he must pick up what the staff can not cover on their own while doing his usual managerial duties. Do you really think this manager has any time to stop and ponder if product x is part of the recall? Our society has not encouraged us to stop and contemplate; for some unknown reason, contemplation and thinking are seen as laziness so we rush out like fools and get surprised that we missed something crucial. If the clerk or the owner had had the time to think and relax, one of them would have noticed some of their meat products.... and then casually look at the label and notice that the "97B" code was clearly marked on the packaging--> and with that information, the proper phone call would have been made to ask if this specific item was included in the recall (because whatever list existed may not have been completely filled). Why take chances?

The convenience store owner relies on the bureaucracy of his supplier to give him the proper information at the right time. So why would the owner need to think or to verify anything? Whatever list is produced must be accurate and if the list is missing any crucial information, then it is that department's problem not the store owner. "Not my department, not my responsibility, so I don't have to think"; this mantra avoids personal responsibility and if you add this to the overworked status of the owner and the employee: we can see why some products were still found in the corner stores.

So there is an incompetence involved here, but it is based upon the culture of trying to do too much with next to no resources. Not only should we recuperate the lost workforce through downsizing but we should over-employ people (I think the Japanese have this philosophy in their workforce). The extra time that each employee gains would reduce unhealthy stress and allow extra training or extra education. Encouraging the use of spare time at work for self-improvement can only help a democratic citizenry. And if ever there comes a product recall for whatever reason, the staff has the time to "think" and catch the potential oversight of a product not on the list when it should be there.

My logic is to have an abundance of resources to do a limited output properly. Just think of the possibilities: "Windows" would actually work and not crash your computer on a daily basis, you would not have to wait in line for 15 minutes just to order a coffee, and the best yet: you would actually talk to a human being on the phone when trying to reach a government bureaucrat on issue "y" and "x". Gone are the 1950's when you had 5 gas station attendants to serve one car, we are in the days where 1 gas station attendant has to serve 5 cars simultaneously. I would prefer to get closer to the "what" we had before. And you?

Too Sanitized?

One possibility that we must consider with the listeriosis bacteria, which was found in several meat products, is the human capacity to withstand bacteria. Apparently listeriosis can infect meat on more occasions than we, the public, imagine. The news reports did note that the more common victims are the elderly and the very young children with lower immune systems. Is it possible this bacteria could have been inconsequential to the human immune system and that we have just created problem #3? (look at my previous 2 blogs for reasons 1 and 2)

Problem #3 would be our constant desire to sanitize everything to the point of ridiculousness. We use anti-bacterial soap, we wash everything more frequently than other cultures and as soon as we have the slightest sniffle, we pop some type of antibiotic. Our immune system relies upon the world in being very clean and relies upon the boost to fight off any infection. Teach a child to rely on crutches when he has two normal legs and he will not have the proper strength to walk on his own power. Our immune system may have similar strengths and weaknesses. If our immune system is weak through "laziness", then we can succumb to diseases, viruses and bacteria much easier.

Does it not seem interesting that each generation of our society seems to develop more allergies to various normal items? Now I don't want to look at how pollution can be the culprit and I don't want to look at how some diseases seem to evolve into better versions of themselves; both do have their part in the equation. I just think that the focus should be to compare our society of hyper cleanliness with other societies that put less stress on the cleaning scale and see if A) they get less allergies and B) if they withstand things like listeriosis better than us. Our current listeriosis scare may have been less dangerous to us as a society if we had been less "clean-freaks".

I agree that cleanliness has avoided many diseases, and this is something to keep in our daily practice. Physicians will obviously keep cleaning their hands to avoid the spread of germs from one patient to another, and hospitals can probably end up being cleaner places. I am more focused upon the exagerated cleanliness, using regular soap instead of the anti-bacterial ones. Allowing a child to play with local pets or playing out in the field instead of cocooning the child to avoid all possible germs or allergies. If you are sick, take the time to rest and recuperate instead of panicking and believing you have the worse possible disease and then be prescribed an antibiotic like it was candy.

Being clean is great, but lets keep it in perspective; never taking a bath is foolish, but taking a bath every 3 hours is just as foolish. If our society is closer to the second extreme in this metaphorical taking of baths, it may have contributed to the unfortunate deaths. If that is the case, we should rectify this. Else, we will succumb to things that we shouldn't have to.

Bureaucratic Blunders

My second argument for the listeriosis accident pertains to the inflexible bureaucratic rules which stifle human judgment and common sense. Now I don't know how accurate the news reports are about the actual happenings of the food inspectors of the private company or of the government inspectors. Who knew what when and where is often difficult to ascertain in the context of the next news report let alone a full investigation. I also know that the bureaucracy has an internal confidentiality to prevent anyone outside the in-group to know what actually goes on. No one on the inside of the bureaucratic machine will inform the external observer unless the external observer asks very precise questions, and no external observer can ever know what precise questions to ask to get the answers sought. The bureaucrat will not volunteer information because of confidentiality clauses and will only answer the properly filled out requests on the appropriate forms during the appropriate times.

But to get back to the listeriosis issue and the news, I did hear about an interesting development. Apparently, there was appropriate testing done by the private company. The testing was done on the work stations themselves and when the bacteria was found, the entire work station was cleaned up immediately. That's great and efficient on their part, but; and this is where the bureaucratic rules come in to stifle common sense, they never bothered to inspect the food products themselves. After all, aren't the government inspectors responsible for that? "Not my department, my bureaucratic rules say to clean workstation B if bacteria is found on workstation B. Why would I check to see if any of the food has been contaminated? There are no rules written for that!"

I can understand that bureaucratic instructions can cover many routine situations and help to train people to make proper decisions. But we seem to have placed these rules above human ingenuity and human judgment. The rules we create should be there to serve our interests not the other way around. We don't create rules so that we can eliminate our independence and end up being servants of what we created. Assuming that the news reports accurately depicted the situation (and having seen some bureaucratic blunders with my own eyes in the areas I have worked), this is an indication of allowing the bureaucratic regulations to dictate actions that go opposite common sense with the obvious results.

Once a person has been trained to use the bureaucratic rules and that he knows them implicitly, then that person should be encouraged to throw the rules away. Lets take a lesson from military strategy, the goal of military strategy is to achieve an objective with the least amount of damage to oneself. To do this, plans are made that covers every single possible contingency, you are expected to memorize every military precept, every potential contingency and be ready to follow every section of the plan precisely...... then, as soon as battle commences, every great strategist from Sun Tzu to Clausewitz and beyond, all agree on one thing: you throw every plan away after the first few seconds of the battle and use your human judgment to carry on. Otherwise, disaster strikes.

So this accident could have been averted if someone would have just thought for three seconds; that perhaps if the work station was contaminated, then perhaps one should spend a small amount of money to inspect some of the food as well and see if it has been contaminated. Don't expect that the other department would catch it in time, don't rely on the bureaucratic rules to avoid doing the right thing because you hope that every contingency has been covered. Well, as the news reports claim, the inspection of the food products were not carried out by the private company and by the time the government inspectors came to the food itself, the damage had already been done. With a much higher cost to the private company than what he would have had to pay if he would have just thought about it for three seconds and not cut corners. Is this another side-effect of capitalism gone wild?

Listeriosis deaths, a surprise?

This is in reference to the unprecedented recall of the meat products because some people have become infected in Canada with the listeriosis bacteria. I believe that this sort of disaster should not be such a surprise and that this can happen in any industrialized nation, considering the recent trends common to all. I can think of two major arguments off hand as to why this disaster could have happened and how this situation can happen again. I may come up with a third or more as I explore this through writing.

I do not want to limit this criticism to the health departments or to the food industry in general. Quite the opposite, my critique also includes other areas, such as why a bridge collapses accidently or why such companies as Enron fall into such financial ruin. I am just using the latest in current events to express my critique. I do not consider myself The expert, but if my criticism rings true, I hope that the appropriate changes will be implemented instead of playing the credentials game. In other words, if "wisdom comes out of the mouth of babes", then we should ignore the foolishness out of the mouth of the experts. Judge the wisdom on the statement itself and not upon the speaker.

Today I will only focus upon one of my two arguments, the trend of downsizing. Lets start with the illustration of a company with 10 people doing the work of 10 people. This wonderful company succeeds wonderfully with happy employees. One day, the boss decides to get 9 people to do the work of 10 people.... its only a 10% increase in work output for each remaining employee. Other companies, out of competitiveness follow suit. This lasts for about 10 years or so and then when it has been forgotten that the work of 10 people is being done by 9, the boss reduces his workforce by 1 which now causes 8 people to do the work of 10 people. The boss can justify this by saying to the remaining employees that they are only increasing the existing workload by aproximately 10%. No one seems to remember that the real increase is 20% from what is normal. Another 10 or so years go by and another reduction. If this trend started in the 1970's and we are now in the 2000's, we would have this company of 6 people doing the work of 10.

Can it really be a surprise that more mistakes are made? We are asked as a society to cut corners to keep the same output or even increase an output with even less resources. If we fed our athletes in the same way we feed our industries, how long would it take for them to collapse? The remaining employees are more exhausted, so they take more sickdays just to cope, the ones that manage to stick it out acquire burnouts and become unproductive despite their will to continue. With these well-meaning employees, unfortunate mistakes seem to prop up.

The most ironic statistics that I have seen are the ones that show European workers who work less work hours a day than American workers, European workers who also work less work days per week compared to American workers, and European workers who have much more paid vacation weeks per year than their American counterparts..... and with all of this, the Europeans still out-produce Americans?! And with this, the Europeans record less stress-related diseases and less sickdays. Now I am unsure if they compensate this by having enough workers to work their jobs (as in 10 workers to do the job of 10 people). But we should definitely look into this and not take on more than we can chew.

The human can probably do more than usual for limited amounts of time, like when a natural disaster strikes, the human can work harder and longer than normal.... but I don't think this is something that can be maintained for any length of time. It just seems that many employers are trying to milk this extra energy for all its worth without looking at the long term costs for society at large.

So to me, this listeriosis accident could have been prevented and avoided, and it should not have surprised anyone who has taken the time to contemplate the consequences of yesterday's decisions. Cutbacks on personel for the past few decades are only starting to make their unfortunate effects be felt.