Good news for vegans: Meat declared a vegetable!

This Reagan tribute stuff has really gone overboard. A judge has ruled that the USDA is clear to repeat their 1981 ketchup fiasco by declaring that batter-coated, frozen french fries are really a fresh veggie.

The Frozen Potato Products Institute got the USDA to declare that frozen fries were fresh vegetables under the 1930 Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA). That law was designed to protect small farmers in the Depression get their money if a customer went bankrupt. Well, when one of the big food distributors, Fleming, went out of business, the fry guys decided to invoke PACA to get their money. Fleming fought back, saying something along the lines of “Any moron knows that french fries are not fresh vegetables!”

Au contraire! According to the USDA:

Fresh fruits and fresh vegetables include all produce in fresh form generally considered as perishable fruits and vegetables, whether or not packed in ice or held in common or cold storage, but does not include those perishable fruits and vegetables which have been manufactured into articles of food of a different kind or character. The effects of the following operations shall not be considered as changing a commodity into a food of a different kind or character: Water, steam, or oil blanching, battering, coating, chopping, color
adding, curing, cutting, dicing, drying for the removal of surface moisture; fumigating, gassing, heating for insect control, ripening and coloring; removal of seed, pits, stems, calyx, husk, pods rind, skin, peel, et cetera; polishing, precooling, refrigerating, shredding, slicing, trimming, washing with or without chemicals; waxing, adding of sugar or other sweetening agents; adding ascorbic acid or other agents to retard oxidation; mixing of several kinds of sliced, chopped, or diced fruit or vegetables for packaging in any type of containers; or
comparable methods of preparation.

In other words: Boil ’em, bake ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew, taters are still po-tay-toes, as far as the government is concerned.

But why should the USDA be any different?

“…our Department of ‘Justice’ – they say ‘it’s OK to torture people.’ What’s the Department of Education doing, burning books?” – Jay Leno