Why All These Product Recalls Are a Good Thing; State Farm Dumps More Policies–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: March 21, 2024

Indy Digest: March 21, 2024

Links to news about product recalls have become a staple of this newsletter.

The goals of the Indy Digest are to 1) bring you the Independent’s latest coverage, and 2) share links to news stories (from reliable sources, of course) that may pertain to or interest you, dear reader—and I figure you’d want to know if, say, the Trader Joe’s frozen soup dumplings in your freezer might contain hard plastic, or, as was reported just today, the Starbucks mug you received as a holiday present could possibly injure you.

And, well, there’s been a LOT of recall news lately. This may lead some to believe that the country’s food, automobile and coffee-cup-manufacturing processes are getting worse.

Since the third goal of the Indy Digest is to put news stories in the proper context, I need to tell you that all of this recall news is not a sign of things getting worse—but, in fact, it’s likely a sign that things are getting better.

Here’s a piece published by Entrepreneur magazine last September. It confirms that the number of food recalls is indeed on the rise. And the reason? The piece says: “Keith Belk, director of the Center for Meat Safety and Quality at Colorado State University, told ABC that contamination detection has significantly improved in recent years, contributing to the number of recalls. Factors like new investigation tools, heightened monitoring by the FDA, and third-party testing companies have also contributed to the rising number of recalls being reported.”

In other words, the food is not getting worse; our food-checking system is getting better.

Seeing as two of the three times in my life I’ve been sickest have been due to food poisoning, I find this to be very good news, indeed—as should you.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• State Farm has decided to NOT renew tens of thousands of California insurance policies. KTLA reports: “State Farm General Insurance Company plans to non-renew about 30,000 property insurance and 42,000 commercial apartment policies in California, the company announced. … State Farm, California’s largest insurer as of 2022, said the move would impact 2% of its total policies in the state and was made to ensure ‘long-term sustainability.’ The 42,000 commercial apartment non-renewals represent a complete withdrawal from the commercial apartment market in California. The other 30,000 non-renewals would impact homeowners, rental dwellings, and other property insurance policies, according to State Farm.” Yikes!

• This ProPublica headline says “How the U.S. Waged a Global Campaign Against Baby Formula Regulation.” What?! The story says: “(One particular) U.S. endeavor in Thailand was part of a decades-long, global effort to protect the United States’ significant formula production and export business. ProPublica reviewed thousands of pages of emails and memos by U.S. officials, letters to foreign ministries, correspondence from industry groups and academic research. We also interviewed health experts and government leaders in nearly two dozen countries, including former U.S. officials. Together, the reporting shows the U.S. government repeatedly used its muscle to advance the interests of multinational baby formula companies, such as Mead Johnson and Abbott, while thwarting the efforts of Thailand and other developing countries to safeguard the health of their youngest children.” Wow.

• Wired magazine says a group of hackers has discovered that 3 million hotel-keycard locks can be opened within seconds. That’s the bad news. The worse news: A fix of the problem, in some cases, could be months away: “(The hackers’) technique starts with obtaining any keycard from a target hotel—say, by booking a room there or grabbing a keycard out of a box of used ones—then reading a certain code from that card with a $300 RFID read-write device, and finally writing two keycards of their own. When they merely tap those two cards on a lock, the first rewrites a certain piece of the lock’s data, and the second opens it. … (The hackers) say they were … told by Dormakaba that, as of this month, only 36 percent of installed Safloks have been updated. Given that the locks aren’t connected to the internet and some older locks will still need a hardware upgrade, they say the full fix will still likely take months longer to roll out, at the very least. Some older installations may take years.”

• The state today angered a whole lot of workers’ advocates by deciding at the last minute to NOT enact new regulations regarding indoor heat. Our partners at CalMatters report: “California workers have waited five years for the state to adopt regulations protecting them from indoor heat. Today, they were staring at another delay. The rule was expected to be finally voted into place by the Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board at a meeting this morning in San Diego. But Wednesday night, state officials ordered that it be pulled from the agenda after Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration suddenly withdrew a required stamp of approval, saying it learned the rule would cost state prisons much more money than anticipated. The eleventh-hour move infuriated workers, their advocates — and the safety board itself, which faced a brief protest by the rule’s proponents during the meeting.”

• The state is about to extended a deadline for college financial-aid filings due to the mess involving glitches in the federal system. The Associated Press says: “The California Legislature on Thursday voted to give prospective college students more time to apply for two of the state’s largest financial aid programs after a glitch in the federal government’s application system threatened to block up to 100,000 people from getting help. California had already extended the deadline for its financial aid programs from March 2 to April 2. On Thursday, the state Senate gave final approval to a bill that would extend it again until May 2. The bill now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom. ‘Clearly, our students need our help,’ Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside who authored the bill, told lawmakers during a public hearing earlier this week. … A computer glitch prevented parents from filling out the form if they did not have a Social Security number. That meant many students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents but whose parents are not were blocked from completing the form and thus could not apply for California’s aid programs.”

• And finally … this is a little weird, and a lot cool—because it shows organ-transplant science is progressing in big ways. CNN reports: “Doctors have performed the first transplant of a genetically modified kidney from a pig into a living human, they announced Thursday. The four-hour surgery was performed Saturday at Massachusetts General Hospital, which was also the first hospital to perform a kidney transplant in 1954. The patient, Rick Slayman, a 62-year-old manager with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation who had been diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease, is recovering well and expected to be discharged from the hospital soon. Doctors said Thursday that they thought his new kidney could last years but also acknowledged that there are many unknowns in animal-to-human transplants.”

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