WE Blog

Who cares about exposing Kansans to tainted food, especially if our legislators can make their ideological points. Gotta have your priorities right, don’t cha know?

This is not too unusual. The basis behind it is sounds. Meat inspectors were backed by Veterinarians and still are I suppose. Veterinarians have very similar training to physicians, but exceed it in the terms of consumable products.

Vets have to know not only the anatomy and physiology of the animal, they are well trained in specific diseases, microbiology and etc. This gets translated down to the Technician level, where there are many “Vet” based educated inspectors.

How this applies to inspecting restaurants is circuitous, but works. Being medically trained allows both Vets and Technicians to immediately have the background to know about diseases and their etiologies.

They’ve recently changed it, but back in the day, the armed forces had Veterinarians in charge of their food inspection program and in charge of inspecting dining facilities and off base vendors that sold food to the military.

The Environmental Services that currently inspect restaurants may not be well rounded enough to understand the medical aspects of food-borne contamination, at least not understanding the basis of what was previously mentioned.

I think it’s a wise move. The USDA has many types of food inspectors and use their own Risk Analysis methods specifically tailor to the evaluation, inspection and control of food borne diseases.