If you missed it, “60 Minutes” had a report last week on the domestic pork supply chain, pathogens, antibiotic use in livestock and efforts to trace food safety outbreaks back to the farm. Spoiler alert: The meat industry didn’t come off as heroes.

In a report that was long on shade and light on specifics, the real howler — to me —was a comment made by Lance Price, a microbiologist at George Washington University and founding director of the Antibiotic Resistance Action Center:

“You have these big, multinational companies that are messing with our food safety system. But they hide behind this image of an American farmer. … This is not a guy in overalls. This is a guy in a suit with a Maserati.”

I can’t imagine anything else Price could have said that would have been more tone deaf.

I’m a journalist, though, and I’m paid to fact-check my feelings, so I reached out to the industry’s “big, multinational companies” and asked how many of their executives at any level wear suits, let alone drive Maseratis.

Spoiler alert: Nobody does.

Even CEOs go “business casual” unless there’s a reason to put on a tie. And in the parking lot? Pickup trucks and mid-priced sedans, mostly. For sure, some of the trucks are pretty tricked out. I’ve seen a few Benzes and Beemers; I figured they probably belong to the folks in marketing. But a Maserati?

I don’t think anybody in the meat business is impractical enough to buy any car with a base price of $108,000.

But the car isn’t the point of this blog, and neither is the suit. The point is the ease with which Prof. Price made a sweeping, incorrect characterization of an entire industry via a platform — the venerable “60 Minutes” — with enormous reach. And the point is the way “60 Minutes” producers made sure to include that particular, attention-grabbing sound bite out of what likely were hours of interview, quite likely at the expense of other, more thought-provoking comments.

Because the report did throw a light on a public health issue that concerns the entire meat industry: The roadblocks that stand in the way of vital research that could track a food poisoning outbreak back to the farm, which may be the source of the pathogen.

Laws exist to protect property from trespassers, even from government researchers if the property owner — say, a hog farmer — denies them entry. However, public health may benefit from the data those researchers want to collect. The issue gains urgency as those pathogens evolve and become more dangerous.

Meat producers and processors should consider whether laws and regulations that protect them individually are more important than the health of the greater community. And that’s a complex, multifaceted issue that deserves the time spent on carefully considered debate, not a superficial, throwaway comment highlighted in a TV report.

How’s your Maserati?

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