The Hightower Report

Soft Landing in Rough Times

These are rough times. How rough, you ask? So rough that even the relative roughness of toilet tissue has arisen as a question of economic and political fairness.

This pressing issue is being played out in California, naturally – a state that is always in the forefront of public-policy debates. Specifically, the county of Riverside is grappling with the delicate matter of tissue texture.

It all started a couple of years ago when county employees complained that the one-ply toilet tissue being used was ... well, rough. So, the county supervisor rolled out a new policy of putting two-ply in all stalls. Employees beamed with smiles of comfort.

But not for long. The county's 18,500 employees recently learned that a double level of tushy cushiness had been delivered to the toilet stalls used by the top 10 elected officials and the executive staff. These VIPs are blessed with four-ply tissue, sold under the brand name of Angel Soft.

"Why do these 100 or so executive-level employees get twice the softness that we do?" demanded the other 18,400 county workers. There was no good answer. A county spokesman could only say, "There was a texture test, and then the Facilities Management Department decided that Angel Soft would be utilized for elected officials and their guests."

This did not sit well with the two-ply crowd, which was already feeling shorted after taking a 10% pay cut due to budget constraints. After all, every three sheets of Angel Soft cost the county a penny more than three sheets of the common tissue, so it also became a matter of budgetary integrity.

Good news – top county officials now say that, in the interest of tissue egalitarianism, they'll revert to two-ply! Once again, California has put itself on the cutting edge of social progress.

The Price of Pie

How's this for a tombstone? "Here lies a guy/Killed by a pie."

More accurately, the killer is corporate globalization and greed. Food conglomerates scavenge the globe in a constant search for ever-cheaper ingredients from low-wage nations that have practically no food-safety protections – which could make that potpie in your freezer a killer.

Consider the case of ConAgra Foods, a massive conglomerate that sells more than 100 million potpies a year under the Banquet label. Its pies contain 25 ingredients, though sometimes they contain an extra one not listed on the label: salmonella. Poisoning customers is bad for repeat business, so ConAgra does do spot checks for pathogens. However, it has been unable to pinpoint which ingredient is the culprit.

In fact, as The New York Times has reported, such food giants concede that their supply chain is so far-flung that they "do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes." The problem is so widespread that makers of Banquet, Swanson, Nestlé, Hungry-Man, and other brand-name foods admit they can no longer ensure the safety of their products.

So, you might assume they'd be changing their suppliers to get better ingredients. Ha! What a silly dreamer you are! That could squeeze their profits. Instead, they are simply shifting the responsibility for the safety of their products to you, the consumer. The Banquet potpie package, for example, now instructs you to cook the pie to exactly 165 degrees "as measured by a food thermometer in several spots."

Hello – this is supposed to be a convenience food, not a science experiment. Most families don't even have a food thermometer. Instead of thrusting safety instructions at us, how about just putting safe ingredients in the pies?