On October 9, the Washington Post reported that after conducting a survey of the nearly 200,000 prisoners in federal custody, the Bureau of Prisons removed pork and pork products from the federal prisons menu at the start of the new fiscal year in October.
Edmond Ross, a spokesman for the prison bureau said, “Why keep pushing food that people don’t want to eat? Pork has been the lowest-rated food by inmates for several years.”
Besides several Congressional leaders expressing dismay at the decision, the National Pork Producers Council was up in arms over the Bureau of Prisons decision. “I find it hard to believe that a survey would have found a majority of any population saying, ‘No thanks, I don’t want any bacon,’” said Dave Warner, a spokesman for the Washington-based trade association.
In a letter written on Thursday to Bureau of Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels, Jr., Senator Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said, “The pork industry is responsible for 547,800 jobs, which creates $22.3 billion in personal incomes and contributes $39 billion to the gross domestic product.” He went on to say the U.S. is the world’s largest exporter of pork products and the third largest producer of pork products.
In his harshly worded letter, Grassley, who happens to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the federal prison system, warned that the “unprecedented” decision to take pork off the federal prisons menu would “have consequences on the livelihoods of American citizens who work in the pork industry.”
As was reported in Gawker, the decision set off a huge political controversy with lawmakers who are in the pockets of the pork industry lobbyists. After the dust had settled, not surprisingly, the Bureau of Prisons called the good senator’s office to tell him they were backing off the decision and returning pork to the menu, according to Fox News.
According to the Washington Post on Friday, the Bureau of prisons has only agreed to bring pork roast back, supposedly the only pork dish served to prisoners after other pork dished had been phased out. The bureau still contends that when surveyed, prisoners said pork was the least liked item on the menu, and the cost of pork was also a consideration in their decision.
