Thanks to a leak from federal bureaucrats, an industry trade publication is chumming the waters for the mainstream media, with an allegation that the new hiring freeze is somehow endangering the public (hat tips: Ed Lasky and Cheryl Jacobs Lewin).  Coral Beach of Food Safety News writes:

At the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the other federal agency primarily involved in food safety efforts, the federal hiring freeze imposed by the new administration is having an impact on the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS).

In an internal message sent to FSIS employees on Jan. 18 and obtained by Food Safety News warned that delays in lab tests are expected through at least March 3. The FSIS is responsible for ensuring the safety of meat, poultry, eggs and catfish.

“Effective Jan. 18, 2017, due to a temporary decrease in staffing, results on pathology samples submitted to the FSIS laboratory system will be delayed,” according to the email sent to all FSIS employees.

“AMR-01 and rush cases will be given priority status; however turnaround times are expected to be delayed by at least 24 hours on these samples. This is expected to be rectified by March 3, 2017, but is dependent on staffing key vacancies. The Pathology Branch apologies for the inconvenience these delays will cause.”

At lest one lab employee is retiring (retirement benefits for federal bureaucrats are really, really nice), and can’t be replaced at the moment. Non-urgent cases could be delayed one day or even more. Tragic!

Any company that lives with market discipline finds ways to increase productivity, and “downsizing” and “right-sizing” have been buzzwords for decades.  So being unable to replace a retiring employee is a challenge that any proactive private company should be able to meet.  But not our federal bureaucrats.  Proactive, creative responses to resource constraints evidently are not part of the job description.

Every conservative who lived through media sob stories during the “government shutdown” orgy of propaganda remembers families disappointed at the gates of closed national park and other hysterics.  

A hiring freeze is no big deal.  Will the mainstream media to try to inflate it into a threat to public safety and worse?  If past behavior is predictive, a new meme will be born and spread