So to speak. Anyway Chuck Shepherd points to a recent Hillary Clinton stump speech hors d'oeuvre, which went as follows:
"A ham and cheese sandwich on one slice of bread is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which inspects manufacturers daily. But a ham and cheese sandwich on two slices of bread is the responsibility of the Food and Drug Administration, which inspects manufacturers about once every five years."
To find out if her sandwich example was correct, we turned to government reports on food safety, interviewed the head of the USDA's food inspection service and studied the government's Food Standards and Labeling Policy Book, a fascinating manual that provides rules for Wiener schnitzel "a veal cutlet prepared by dipping in egg, flour and bread crumbs, and frying to a golden brown", whole hog sausage (must contain all primal parts; hearts and tongues in "natural proportions" are allowed) and vinegar pickle ("sausage in vinegar pickle is approved with the understanding that sausage is completely covered with pickle and that the pickle has a pH level not higher than 4.5"). The manual also spells out which foods are under USDA jurisdiction.
We found that Clinton is correct about the regulation of sandwiches - indeed, the ham and cheese example is often cited by critics - and she is correct about the big disparity in inspections by the two agencies.
In an interview with PolitiFact last week, Richard Raymond, the USDA's undersecretary for food safety, acknowledged that the sandwich rule is silly.
"There is no rationale or logic that I can explain to anybody," he said. "It defies logic."
[From Worldandnation: Ham and cheese, but hold the bureaucracy]
Ahhh, nothing like the lip-smacking taste of government in action....
