On Wednesday, Montana’s state Senate advanced legislation that “would allow people to salvage roadkill for food,” arguing that preventing the practice would mean throwing away a perfectly acceptable nutritional source. As bill supporter Sen. Larry Jent (D) put it, “It really is a sin to waste good meat.” But setting aside the inevitable jokes over the proposed “finders, eaters” law, the debate surrounding the measure’s public health implications provides a lens into America’s food safety regulatory scheme — and it’s more complicated than you might think.

Montana is hardly the first state to propose something like this. In fact, there are already roadkill-salvaging laws on the books in at least seven states — including Alaska, Illinois, Georgia, Kentucky, and West Virginia — with varying degrees of regulatory requirements. Most of these laws either require the would-be roadkill consumer to carry a permit that allows them to salvage the kill, or report the salvaging to law enforcement and state wildlife departments. While there are guidelines for how to safely consume the “smooshed meat” — for instance, almost all such laws are limited to run-over game such as elk and deer, which should be “bled, gutted, and quartered” as quickly as possible to cool off the carcass and prevent infections — there isn’t really an enforcement mechanism for them, so the consumer takes on some individual risk.

However, whether or not that risk is greater than the risk of eating mass-produced meats is an open question. Animal protection groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have actually advocated for loosening roadkill standards, claiming that “[e]ating roadkill is healthier for the consumer than meat laden with antibiotics, hormones, and growth stimulants, as most meat is today.” The historical data — and recent events — shows that there is something to that argument. American-produced meat tends to exceed acceptable levels of contamination by most countries’ standards, and the consolidation of meat resources by mammoth corporate distributors like Cargill Beef makes it so that just one contaminated batch necessitates nationwide recalls of tens of thousands of pounds of product. Many public health advocates also argue that food regulators are woefully impotent to hold the meat industry accountable for its shortcomings in the face of lax regulatory enforcement and “ag gag laws” that silence whistleblowers who expose facilities violating food safety standards.

And the argument that roadkill-salvaging laws help prevent the waste of good meat actually could be an important point for low-income communities. Some of this type of legislation is intended to address food insecurity in secluded communities. For instance, Alaska’s caribou- and bear-salvaging provisions are meant to help churches and soup kitchens distribute food to the homeless and the poor in a state where access to roads and super markets isn’t always easy to come by. Montana’s proposed law has similar intentions.

Some Montana legislators have raised concerns over law enforcement’s capacity to evaluate whether or not roadkill is safe for consumption, and the ambiguous liability laws governing shelters and food banks that might distribute such meats. “Despite its good intention, it doesn’t pass the smell test for me,” said state Sen. Kendall Van Dyk (D). But considering America’s lackluster record on meat safety and the widespread — and relatively safe — U.S. culture of hunting big game for personal consumption, those concerns might very well be overstated.

A new food inspection rule proposed by the US Department of Agriculture would let poultry plants conduct their own inspections, removing federal food inspectors from the assembly line. At a House appropriations oversight hearing on Wednesday, Food Safety and Inspection Service administrators argued the move would save taxpayers money and allow the department to focus on testing for pathogens like e. coli and salmonella.

But other FSIS inspectors working in poultry plants piloting the new rule protest that public health is sacrificed by outsourcing inspections. Poultry plant employees often miss contaminated birds, and are even discouraged from removing the ones they do flag:

In affidavits given to the Government Accountability Project, a nonprofit legal-assistance group for government whistle-blowers, several inspectors who work at plants where the pilot program is in place said the main problem is that they are removed from positions on the assembly line and put at the end of the line, which makes it impossible for them to spot diseased birds.

The inspectors, whose names were redacted, said they had observed numerous instances of poultry plant employees allowing birds contaminated with fecal matter or other substances to pass. And even when the employees try to remove diseased birds, they face reprimands, the inspectors said.

While public health may suffer, the poultry plants will reap huge benefits from this rule change. The USDA says the elimination of inspector jobs will save $90 million in taxpayer dollars over three years — but poultry businesses are projected to save $125 million a year. The rule would also let plants speed up the production line to 175 birds per minute from 140, giving inspectors a third of a second to check each chicken for contamination.

Not only does speeding up production make it impossible to screen contaminated chickens on the assembly line, it also endangers workers. According to interviews conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center with over 300 poultry workers, nearly 75 percent of workers have suffered a workplace injury or illness. As many of them are immigrants, their employers threaten them with deportation or firing for offenses like taking a bathroom break (many workers reported wetting themselves because they were not allowed to leave the line), falling ill, or seeking medical treatment from someone outside the company. Poultry plant assembly lines already run at rapidfire speeds, and workers are forced to handle the birds even if they are injured, sick, or bleeding.

Foodborne illness sickens 48 million Americans and kills about 3,000 people every year. The most common culprits are pathogens carried by feces in tightly-packed factory farms. Despite the ubiquity of foodborne illness, food safety inspectors stationed in these plants are notoriously lax. Shortly before an e. coli outbreak caused by Cargill hamburger meat, federal inspectors repeatedly discovered violations of Cargill’s own standards at 55 plants in handling beef, but never imposed penalties or sanctions. Soon, 940 people fell ill. Many suffered permanent damage. If plants are allowed to swap out federal inspectors with their own employees, this haphazard approach to food safety will only worsen.

Food regulators recently uncovered horsemeat masquerading as beef in Burger Kings, school cafeterias, and hospitals across Europe and the UK, prompting multiple product recalls and widespread horror. The horsemeat scandal has not touched the US, and many experts and journalists have rushed to reassure Americans that their burgers are safe from horse contamination. But compared to the dangerous pathogens hiding in US-produced meat, Americans might want to consider replacing their beef patties with European horsemeat.

The debacle has exposed weaknesses in the EU’s food safety procedures. However, horsemeat poses a negligible health risk. There have been no reported deaths or illnesses caused by this contamination. Though a harmful horse painkiller called bute was found in 8 of the 206 horses, a human would have to eat more than 500 burgers made entirely of horsemeat to ingest a human dose.

On the other side of the Atlantic, the average American consumes roughly 270 pounds of meat per year, and it’s unlikely that horsemeat is in the mix. There is, however, plenty of evidence that many Americans are inadvertently eating a side of deadly bacteria like salmonella or e. coli with their burgers. According to Center for Disease Control estimates, 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne illnesses every year. In comparison, the entire European Union had roughly 45,000 illnesses and 32 deaths from contaminated food in 2008. That means foodborne illness strikes 15 percent of Americans each year, but only .00009 percent of Europeans.

American meat also often exceeds levels of contamination considered unacceptable in most of the developed world. Mexico refused a shipment of American beef in 2008 because it exceeded Mexico’s upper regulatory limit for copper contamination. Because the US has no such restrictions, the beef returned to the US to be sold to Americans instead.

The most common culprits behind foodborne illness are salmonella, norovirus, Campylobacter, toxoplasma gondii, and E. coli 0157, which are carried through feces. These pathogens have also been discovered in some fruit and vegetables that have soaked up infected waste runoff from nearby factory farms. But food safety regulators continue to avert their eyes when confronted with the appalling conditions in which the vast majority of American meat is produced. The New York Times highlighted the regulatory failure after a 2007 e. coli outbreak:

Within weeks of the Cargill outbreak in 2007, U.S.D.A. officials swept across the country, conducting spot checks at 224 meat plants to assess their efforts to combat E. coli. Although inspectors had been monitoring these plants all along, officials found serious problems at 55 that were failing to follow their own safety plans. [...] In the weeks before [an e. coli outbreak], federal inspectors had repeatedly found that Cargill was violating its own safety procedures in handling ground beef, but they imposed no fines or sanctions, records show. After the outbreak, the department threatened to withhold the seal of approval that declares “U.S. Inspected and Passed by the Department of Agriculture.”

The USDA is not the only agency that has dropped the regulatory ball. The Environmental Protection Agency recently abandoned an effort that would require factory farms to report basic information, such as their location, number of animals, and the amount of manure they discharge. Congress would go even further; the stalled House Farm Bill included provisions banning all state regulation of nearly any agricultural product. The fast-approaching sequester cuts will also eliminate roughly 600 food inspector positions at meat and poultry plants.

Several states have also passed “ag gag laws” to criminalize whistleblowers who secretly film inside facilities or take a job under false pretenses. These laws became popular after a Humane Society video documented a California slaughterhouse routinely abusing and killing sick cattle in 2008. The video triggered the largest beef recall in US history and resulted in a $500 million settlement, the largest penalty ever awarded for an animal abuse case. In response to the video, President Obama also banned the slaughter of these so-called “downer” cows, which have an increased risk of contracting mad cow disease and bacterial infections like e. coli. He did, however, lift the ban on horsemeat in the US last year.

The U.S. Agriculture Department proposed the first broad standards for healthier school snacks on Friday. Under the rule, required by the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, most candy, sugar-filled sports drinks, and greasy foods would not be sold in school vending machines. Instead, they can offer snacks under 200 calories and low-calorie drinks.

Data supports a ban on unhealthy snacks in vending machines, showing that state regulations may have helped slow childhood obesity rates. However, the ban will not apply to food sold at after-school events or affect what kids bring in for lunch.

If passed, the proposal could go into effect as soon as 2014. First, it faces a 60 day comment period from proponents and critics. Taking backlash from Republican critics over its healthy school lunch rule, USDA modified standards in December to allow unlimited calories from meats and grains.

Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack conceded on Friday that revamped school lunches will allow unlimited grains and meats, in a move to appease critics of healthier school lunch standards. Conservative critics of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act have claimed USDA standards are too stringent, pointing to some school officials’ and students’ complaints over the lunches calorie caps.

In his letter addressed to a number of senators from agricultural states, Vilsack said more “felixibility is being provided to allow more time for the development of products [...] while granting schools additional weekly menu planning options.” But he also responded to a chief criticism of the calorie caps, noting that school lunches meet only a portion of the child’s nutrition:

It is important to point out that the new school meals are designed to meet only a portion of a child’s nutritional needs over the course of the school day. This should come as no surprise — students never have and never will get all of their daily dietary needs from a single meal. School breakfasts and lunches are designed to meet roughly one-fourth and one-third, respectively, of the daily calorie needs of school children.

Since schools still must meet overall calorie caps if they serve more meat and grains, the concession might not do much to appease conservatives like Steve King (R-IA), who called Michelle Obama’s healthy lunch initiative a “misguided nanny state.” A nutritionist who fought for the healthy lunch standards said the change is minor and serves to show Congress it doesn’t need to interfere.

The school lunch standards follow the recommendations of experts at the Institute of Medicine to ensure kids have enough fruits, vegetables, and whole grain foods. But until the USDA releases its rules for vending machines and school stores, school kids can still access more than their fill of junk food.

Every year for the past 13 years, biotechnology giant Monsanto Company has sued about 11 farmers per year for patent infringement of their genetically modified corn and soybean seeds. Many of these farmers have had to pay a settlement to the corporation even when their fields were accidentally contaminated with GM seeds from a neighboring farm. Monsanto simply outspends the defendants, dedicating $10 million a year and 75 staffers for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers. Farmers who have sued Monsanto back have been soundly defeated.

Monsanto is likely to continue this winning streak with an assist from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which released a final report Monday absolving the biotech industry of contamination of non-GM seeds with their products from other fields. The USDA report concludes that organic and other non-GM farmers should simply buy insurance to protect against GMO contamination.

Essentially, Monsanto can sue these farmers all they want for patent infringement, but they are immune to challenges from organic farmers whose products are contaminated by GMOs. As one dissenting committee member commented:

Any farmer/seed grower contaminated will not want to disclose the contamination because they are illegally in possession of a patented material and could be subject to legal action for theft of intellectual property. The committee refused to ever recognize this fact.

The report is just the latest example of the USDA’s cozy relationship with the biotech industry. In fact, the agency has never denied a single application for GM crop approval. Monsanto’s power extends beyond the USDA — also on Monday, the Department of Justice dropped their antitrust investigation into Monsanto’s near monopoly on the nation’s seeds. The stalled Farm Bill in Congress also contains a so-called “Monsanto rider” that would entirely deregulate GM crops and allow Monsanto to basically approve its own product.

There is a slim chance Monsanto’s fortunes could change with a Supreme Court case on this term’s docket. In an unprecedented move, the high court agreed to take on an Indiana farmer’s appeal after he was ordered to pay Monsanto $80,000 for patent infringement. Though the current Supreme Court is quite openly sympathetic to corporate interests, their decision to hear the case at all bodes well for farmers grappling with the agricultural giant all over the country.