Reader Crocodile Chuck pointed out a set of articles at the New York Times that illustrates how skewed priorities in America have become. They also reveal how little public ire there is in the face of large-scale abuses that affect the average Joe. If corporate prerogatives cannot be reined in when personal safety is at stake, how will they be curbed when the chicanery and looting is harder to pin down? The public just isn’t exercised about it.
The object lesson is America’s addiction to hamburgers versus E coli. E coli gets into the food chain when feces get into the meat. Period. It’s a very straightforward contamination mechanism. And in this case, the party fighting for the right to eat contaminated food is Cargill, and one of its major suppliers in its burger business, a company called Beef Products.
If you think I am overstating the case, let’s go back first to an October New York Times article:
Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus…
Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.
Ms. Smith, 22, was found to have a severe form of food-borne illness caused by E. coli, which Minnesota officials traced to the hamburger that her mother had grilled for their Sunday dinner in early fall 2007…
Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit…This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.
Yves here. Now Smith’s reaction was unusually severe, but the point is with the 1994 rule this should not be happening at all, and it still is. Why? The big reason is enforcement is a joke. Grinders are not required to test for the pathogen, and the inspections are rare and even then, an imperfect control mechanism:
The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.”….ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.
Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together. The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.
Yves here. Did you catch that? to the extent the burgers are tested, it’s only after the meat has been ground, and hence impossible to tell what the source might be. Does that look like a serious effort to assure safety? But it gets better:
Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.
Yves again. So there is active, widespread collusion to undermine safe practices. Back to the article:
Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen.
Yves here. The New York Times describes in some detail how feces can and do enter the food production process. Then it turns to Cargill’s intransigence. Cargill was the target of inspections is 2007; spot checks found that nearly 25% had “serious problems” safety-wise. In addition:
In the weeks before Ms. Smith’s patty was made, federal inspectors had repeatedly found that Cargill was violating its own safety procedures in handling ground beef, but they imposed no fines or sanctions…
When Cargill defended its safety system and initially resisted making some changes, an agency official wrote back: “How is food safety not the ultimate issue?”
Yves again. The article had a long, informative description of the hamburger business system, how feces can and do enter burger production, how profit and output pressures make that more likely.
The article in particular discusses one process used by suppliers of fatty meat, ahem, “trim”, which may have been a culprit in the Smith poisoning:
Cargill’s final source was a supplier that turns fatty trimmings into what it calls “fine lean textured beef.” The company, Beef Products Inc., said it bought meat that averages between 50 percent and 70 percent fat, including “any small pieces of fat derived from the normal breakdown of the beef carcass.” It warms the trimmings, removes the fat in a centrifuge and treats the remaining product with ammonia to kill E. coli….
An Iowa State University study financed by Beef Products found that ammonia reduces E. coli to levels that cannot be detected. The Department of Agriculture accepted the research as proof that the treatment was effective and safe. And Cargill told the agency after the outbreak that it had ruled out Beef Products as the possible source of contamination. [emphasis ours]
But federal school lunch officials found E. coli in Beef Products material in 2006 and 2008 and again in August, and stopped it from going to schools, according to Agriculture Department records and interviews.
Yves here. So the faith in efficacy of this ammonia-washing process is based on a single study, funded by a company that uses it to reduce costs. Would you rely on it?
Beef Products is a major player:
With seven million pounds produced each week, the company’s product is widely used in hamburger meat sold by grocers and fast-food restaurants and served in the federal school lunch program. Ten percent of Ms. Smith’s burger came from Beef Products, which charged Cargill about $1.20 per pound, or 20 cents less than the lean trimmings in the burger, billing records show.
Yves here. Do the math. Seven million pounds a week. Assume a half a pound a burger. That is 14 million burger equivalents (remember this product gets mixed in with other beef scraps). McDonalds has been a buyer of Beef Products’ “product” since 2004.
Now we get to the curious part. The Times had an article yesterday about that very same dubious feces removal process, and does not connect the dots back to the earlier article, and in particular, the connections to Cargill. Key bits:
Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.
Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products…
With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.
But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment…..
In July, school lunch officials temporarily banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers.
Presented by The Times with the school lunch test results, top department officials said they were not aware of what their colleagues in the lunch program had been finding for years.
The Beef Products case reveals a schism between the main Department of Agriculture and its division that oversees the school lunch program…Within the U.S.D.A., the treated beef has been a source of friction for years. The department accepted the company’s own study as evidence that the treatment was effective. School lunch officials, who had some doubts about its effectiveness, required that Beef Products meat be tested, as they do all beef used by the program.
School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods.
Yves here. There is also a VERY long discussion of how the product’s ammonia smell elicited customer complaints, and this scrap product has an alkalinity well beyond the range of most foods.
Now consider this part:
Cargill, one of the nation’s largest hamburger makers, is a big buyer of Beef Products’ ammoniated trimmings for its patties. Company records show that Beef Products, like other suppliers, has periodically exceeded Cargill’s limits on acceptable bacteria levels. That led Cargill to stop buying meat from two Beef Products plants for several months in 2006 after company tests showed excessive levels of salmonella.
But the following year, when Cargill faced an E. coli outbreak, it ruled out Beef Products as a possible culprit, citing the U.S.D.A.’s view that the ammonia treatment provided a “lethality step” for the pathogen. In addition, Cargill officials said recently, they suspect that another supplier, not Beef Products, was the problem. As a result, Beef Products did not face as wide a recall as other Cargill suppliers.
Yves here. Now see what this says. Cargill admits to having had salmonella problems with Beef Products, but argues that it isn’t an E coli problem, backing the company’s claims that its ammonia washing process is effective, when there is ample evidence that it isn’t.
So why is Cargill defending Beef Products? The October story had the goods. Beef Products provided 10% of the “meat” in the burger that ruined Stephanie Smith’s health. Beef Products is a very significant supplier to Cargill overall. Its “product” is 5/6 the cost of ground beef. So if we assume that that 10% is representative across all of Cargill’s hamburger products (a big if; my bet is, given Beef Products’ huge weekly output, it is a higher percent of Cargill’s typical burger), then Cargill is defending a dubious producer and process that saves it 1.6% of a typical burger. While that is a big number in a thin margin business like food, why are we discussing tradeoffs like this at all? That sort of calculus was deemed completely unacceptable with the Pinto, a car that would turn into a fireball on a rear-end impact. What indicted Ford, its manufacturer, in the court of public opinion when Mother Jones Magazine obtained a memo that showed that Ford was aware of the problem, and decided it was not worth its while to incur an extra $11 per vehicle in costs to prevent an expected 180 deaths per year.
Yes, meat inspection in the US is a horrorshow (a much bigger topic) but the Cargill/Beef Products case is straightforward. This sort of contamination has been illegal since 1994. Yet (outside the school lunch program), greedy companies who have and continue to hurt consumers to bolster their bottom lines get their regulators to give them a free pass. And unless consumers take action that hits the companies’ bottom lines directly, like boycotting mass produced burgers, these dangerous practices are certain to continue.
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Yves,
There is a lot of excellent detail in your email, and I agree that it is probable that Cargill miscalculated like Ford did with the Pinto.
The larger issue is how to regulate safety. There are two dominant models – self certification with inspections, and government gates. I am working with the FDA on a non-food issue, and am face-to-face with the necessary regulatory burden. I see how it causes people to react to regulation rather than common sense. No excuses, just reality.
The problem with self regulation – as you imply – is that there is a race to the bottom when there is thin margins and expensive safety issues. The victims are the consumers who have no choice but to trust.
The problem with centralized regulation is that innovation is stifled. As an entrepeneur, I fear this mightily.
I question whether the damage of e-coli is greater, than say, the loss of obesity, or other health issues which may be solved through innovation.
Bob,
Thanks for your observations. The problem with the “innovation” argument is that it has become the default argument against regulation, even when it was irrelevant.
I discuss in my book the first concerted corporate push for deregulation, in the 1970s. A coalition of very large companies argued they needed deregulation in order to foster innovation to help American competitiveness. But the whole argument was baloney.
First, the US share of tech exports globally has risen. The US had no innovation or innovation competitiveness problem. They also never made any coherent case between deregulation and innovation. That’s because the case cannot be made. A lot of innovation in fact has occurred IN RESPONSE to regulation (fuel efficiency standards are a biggie. One of the reasons US automakers fell so far behind foreign automakers is the successful fight against tougher fuel efficiency standards).
And the record shows that the big companies that were asking for variances were not innovators! Virtually every study ever done shows that innovative companies are the smaller to medium sized ones.
I am probably bringing a knife to a gun fight, as I do not know the studies you reference. I think the deregulation in the 70’s were a backlash to the tendency since the 30’s to use regulation to control commerce. The schechter supreme court case highlights the overreach of poultry meat regulation used to, for other purposes, to set minimum prices. Innovation has steadily increased in America since I became aware of how the world worked in the 70’s.
I am skeptical that one can measure innovation, because of survival bias. How do you measure something that never occurs? I am also generally skeptical of studies that prove a political point, based on the fragility of data manipulation and the interests of the sponsors.
But most of all, there is not a ‘right’ balance. There are evils on both sides. So it is risk-reward. I only have my personal experience. I know people who have died in wars, died of drug overdoses, died in cars, died of obesity and survived holocausts. I don’t know anyone who has died of underregulation of food.
But most of all, I think there needs to be a ri
Re Bob Goodwin @2:16am
Um, did you just say “Innovation has steadily increased in America” and “I am skeptical that one can measure innovation” in consecutive sentences?
Bob@12:45
1) the fact that you would even draw a distinction between so called ‘innovation’ and the public good (as defined since at least Lister’s germ theory of the 19thC) speaks volumes regarding the USA’s ‘journey’ over the last twenty years
2) as yves points out, the fact that America HAS had strict regulation, with clarity in rules and rigourous prosecution has worked IN ITS FAVOUR; eg, where do you think the world’s faith in its capital markets came from over the last fifty years?
3) ‘cure for obesity’: THIS is an innovation? the formulation of some leptin molecular variant that can pass FDA muster for an ‘invented disease category’ so beloved (increasingly) by BigPharma? See Point 1) above, America’s “Journey”, etc
Bob, I worked for a (nuclear)pharma co. before Reagan. when the inspector from the Food and Drug Administration came ’round, or the engineer from the National Radiation Council, EVERYONE was on their tiptoes. I find it shocking the degree of regulatory capture across so many industries in the US.
If you don’t think that people die from ‘underegulation of food’, or water, I suggest you investigate the history of providing sewerage in Paris in the 19th C (try ‘Voltaire’s Bastards’, John Ralston Saul).
I did not say that people have not died from the underregulation of food, nor did I say regulation was unneeded. I simply said that I did not know anyone who has died from the underregulation of food, whereas I did personally know lots of other tragedies.
Bob
Here is the reason you don’t know anyone who has died from ‘food or water’-because this law has (until recently) been vigrously enforced:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pure_Food_and_Drug_Act
“The problem with centralized regulation is that innovation is stifled. As an entrepeneur, I fear this mightily.”
Innovation, like `fine lean textured beef’ aka `ammoniated fat trimmings’?
If a society can’t even guarantee that the food it eats is safe (no matter how cheap it is), it wont last very long.
How about we let consumers choose whether they want crap in their beef to make it cheaper, and restrict the government’s role to preventing meat producers from lying?
Companies fight disclosure tooth and nail. A lot of consumers wanted disclosure of whether their food has genetically modified organisms in it. Nope, food producers are NOT allowed to put “GMO free” on their wares, it might prejudice consumers against “normal” food.
And what about McDonalds? Do you think it will ever say “Your hamburger has Beef Products in it, which has a X% greater chance of having feces in it than ground beef’?
A perfect example of capture of the regulators yielding a government that works against consumer interest.
On the McDonalds example; no, they will never say that. So I shall take my custom to In-N-Out burger, which has a safety statement I am satisfied with.
awwww you have the in and out urge lol, cut and paste bummper sticker treatment!
Do you mean “Buyer Beware?” That sounds like another “Libertarian” idea that doesn’t work in the real world. What you’re saying is that it’s o.k. for companies to do whatever they want, whether it be fraud in financial products, or unclean/tainted ingredients in our food. No, I would NEVER support such a ridiculous idea, and I believe that most people would feel the same.
I am a libertarian who wants to see more Wall Street sociopaths in jail.
Tim, I don’t see how you got approval of fraud from my statement. I think stamping out fraud is an entirely appropriate use of government power. But I should be free to consume cheap beef with contaminants if I so choose.
Like your actions are with out repercussions eh!
Skippy…I’ve got some faulty hand grenades, but swear their good, 5 second fuse or is it 2, cash in hand and if it don’t work out, ya can sue me k.
Isn’t failure to disclose something harmful a form of fraud? I’m not a lawyer, nor do I care to become one. Call it fraud or something else. Regardless of our laws, I know in my heart that it is terribly wrong to avoid disclosing something potentially harmful to someone who is purchasing something from me thinking my product or service is safe. If that isn’t fraud, what is it?
Also, that well-know Libertarian Greenspan felt that there was no need to crack down on fraud in the self-regulating marketplace.
I should be free to consume cheap beef with contaminants if I so choose.
Isn’t the real-world effect of instituting such a concept as public policy – as if often true with libertarian ideas – that your ability to avoid disease-ridden meat is directly proportional to how rich you are?
Ugh! Glad I don’t eat at fast food joints. Actually, I rarely eat beef anyway since I developed a taste for Buffalo/Bison.
It seems that as a country, we like to create rules/regulations/laws but don’t really care to enforce them, particularly if big businesses that contribute a lot of money to politicians are the would-be targets of enforcement.
The biggest step we can take to begin the reform of how business is done in the USA is to ban campaign contributions to politicians from businesses!
“Food, Inc.” explained this issue very well. It’s really amazing that the company he visited cooperated at all, let alone to the extent they did.
Bob: innovation to solve obesity? Like high-fructose corn syrup that Yves posted about last week? … Not what you meant, I know, but I’m not sure we should be searching for artificially created cures to solve artificially created problems.
I have read Food Inc, and am actually working on launching a medical device. Obesity will be cured. I doubt I will be the one to do it, but that doesn’t mean I can’t dream. Corn syrup is evil, and I would prefer a carbohydrate tax to a carbon tax (my irony).
And you folks thought others were joking about Big Macs and Whoppers being shitburgers, right?
Well, now you know.
This apparently well known work around regulations is fraud. That issue deserves a thorough article of its own.
“… Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.”
Feces are sterilized when cooked adequately. However, if the food handler is ignorant or foolish, they might handle the condiments such as lettuce after handling the raw hamburger without washing their hands first. We should not always be so quick to blame the meat producer!
I gather you did not bother to read the article, since this article is about a particularly nasty strain of E coli, and food scientists disagree with your opinion:
Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen…
In the wake of the outbreak, the U.S.D.A. reminded consumers on its Web site that hamburgers had to be cooked to 160 degrees to be sure any E. coli is killed and urged them to use a thermometer to check the temperature. This reinforced Sharon Smith’s concern that she had sickened her daughter by not cooking the hamburger thoroughly.
But the pathogen is so powerful that her illness could have started with just a few cells left on a counter. “In a warm kitchen, E. coli cells will double every 45 minutes,” said Dr. Mansour Samadpour, a microbiologist who runs IEH Laboratories in Seattle, one of the meat industry’s largest testing firms.
And the nasty strain that felled Stephanie Smith most assuredly came from her burger. Other frozen burgers bought at the same time in her freezer had it. The piece recounts how the traced it back to the producer.
I disagree with your argument. Yes, one can pass germs and other contaminants to other products at home. And yes, cooking your meat well-done will usually (but not always)kill most (but not all) germs. The issue here is that our government adopted food safety measures in the past to better safe-guard our health and well-being. Yet through a lack of enforcement and outright lack of cooperation from some in the meat industry, your chances of encountering one of these germs and/or contaminants is greatly increased.
By the way, washing your hands with soap and water after handling tainted meat will probably not be as effective as you think. Yes, it’s a good idea to wash your hands after handling raw meat. However, as you yourself stated, you have to “sterilize by cooking adequately.”
As an ex-meat cutter, I can assure you that with just a little more care in their processing proceedures, the large meat plants can greatly reduce the risk of feces contamination. But of course, time is money, and discarding meat that is suspected of coming in contact with feces is a profit loss.
Tim,
You are missing the point re the infection via the counter. Not everyone uses separate cutting boards for raw meat versus everything else. That is NOT well advertised. So if the burgers were on the counter (or better yet merely some water from the thawing of the frozen burger got on the counter unnoticed by the cook), and then something you would not routinely “cook till done” (vegetables, or something not cooked at all, like salad or fruit) could be an infection mechanism.
The other tactic that is used by the bigger agribusiness is to use regulations as a club to beat up on little producers.
Because Beef Products are less likely to have e coli (FDA said so), burgers that are made with it don’t really have to be tested.
That little guy down the street? Who knows where his cows have been. You should make sure to have him test all of his beef and prove that they are not contaminated.
I’m still waiting to hear them make the claim that the engineered ammonia beef actually can make the whole burger safe, so why do we have to test any of it? It doesn’t matter if there is e coli in the meat going in to the burger, its all killed by the EAB. We just have to figure how much A to put into the EAB. The fatty tissue then is a carrier of ammonia.
Ammonia- Its got electrolytes.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1fKzw05Q5A
Codex alimentarius – very good starting point on how food is codified and monopolized. Its the country club for food. Just as exclusive, and just as hard to get on the guest list for world wide distribution.
Buy everything you can locally, and try to grow as much as you can yourself. Get good at tracing your food back to the actual source, it could save your life.
Bob,
Read the article. The drafting of the piece is a less than clear here, but it sounds as if that is what they claimed!
Mr. Roth [head of Beef Products] asserted that his product would kill pathogens in untreated meat when it was used as an ingredient in ground beef — raising the prospect of a risk-free burger. “Given the technology, we firmly believe that the two pathogens of major concern in raw ground beef — E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella — are on the verge of elimination,” Mr. Roth wrote to the department.
I just went back and re-read it. From my reading they are claiming that-
There are 2 different mixing points. One for the EAB, One for the burger.
During the first step they can take shitty ‘beef’, mix it with ammonia, and have that come out clean.
During the second step they add the EAB to a bunch of other not so sensitive parts of ‘beef’ to make burgers.
They then test the burger. It the test fails it is (from the BeefProducts point of view) the fault of the not so sensitive parts of ‘beef’, not the EAB.
If they claimed that adding EAB (in the second, burger making process) were a curitive step, they might be liable if any e coli got through.
They just engineered a prisoner’s dilema.
Very narrow point.
Great story and break down.
The solution is to not buy the prepackaged crap. Prepare your own burgers following the basic rules of food handling your mom taught you with meat ground by your local butcher. And cook the burgers thoroughly.
What I find really terrifying is that people are forgetting how to prepare and cook there own food!
Great idea, or use local producers you trust. Or if you can find a large brand you can trust, that works too.
Sorry, that idea wont work since almost ALL ground beef comes from one of 15 meat packing facilities in the US (down from over 1,000 30 years ago). Everyone here should really watch Food Inc. The whole food supply chain is in grave danger.
If you really want safe food, buy it free range and local. 90% off all E.Coli can be removed from a cow in a week by simply taking them out of feed lots and stop feeding them subsidized corn (mother nature build them to eat grass).
“And cook the burgers thoroughly.”
I was utterly horrified a few years ago when out at a bar with some workmates when visiting the USA. For starters, the waitress asked how he wanted his burger cooked, which was a worrying sign – even asking such a thing is simply unthinkable here in Australia. Then he asked for – and received – a ‘rare’ burger. I still can’t believe it. It was massive too, a huge dollop of raw minced meat.
Walking through the meat isle of supermarkets in Florida was an interesting experience a few years later. You could actually smell the off meat. And plenty of it had a green tinge.
Even bronze age middle eastern tribes got the food safety thing right. Halal butchers should have safe meat. Or buy bulk whole cuts and process it yourself – it’s pretty cheap and the uncut meat can’t get contaminated internally like mince (be prepared if you make your own mince though – it wont taste anything like the bought stuff, it’ll taste like real meat).
I know that the main point of this article is the lack of government enforcement of food safety regulations. But as an ex-meat cutter (back when I was younger), I’d like to give you all a little advice.
First, don’t purchase ANY meat products that contain ground meat at any of the larger retail outlets. It’s not just about the E-Coli. It’s about the ingredients. We used to joke about hot dogs being “lips and assholes”, but that’s not what bothers me. It’s all of the chemicals that are used. Also, in many cases the meat that was used was not what you would call “fresh” by any means what-so-ever. I worked in a retail meat store, and when pork cuts were past their “prime” (and often worse) in the case, into the sausage they went!
Second, go buy yourself a small electric meat grinder. I bought one for under $100, and I make my own ground beef as well as my own sausages. I know what goes into my ground meat. Also, when I buy chuck, round, etc. there is a much less chance of contamination than if I had purchased already ground beef in the supermarket. Most of the supermarkets receive pre-mixed boxes of meat from the large packing plants. These pre-packaged mixes are trimmings and scraps, and have a better chance of having been in contact with feces or other contaminants in their processing.
Third, I recommend that you avoid purchasing any “fresh” meat product that has a solution added to it. Read the labels very closely. Most major retailers (WalMart, Fry’s and Kroger, Target, etc.) now carry fresh pork products that have been injected with up to 12% solution, which contains salt and other chemicals. This is also done with whole chickens and chicken breasts. I have also seen this with fresh beef, but not as often. That solution helps to greatly increase the shelf life of the product, since it is often from a plant hundreds of miles away from the retail outlet. It is also bad for people on a salt restricted diet. And, you are paying for added water.
Bon Appetit!
As some one that has worked in quality control under USA and AZ-NZ standards in construction. I would like to point out that sampling is done on average to not less than 1 (or more) to 10 ratio, with regards to structural steel fabrication and protective coatings (umm one *lol* rational market forces). Now you might say hay this is not about food processing[!], but all QC standards are based on the same footing, raw materials, batch size and how much is needed to be tested to satisfy regulations and laws (can’t sue me or find wally augment), that industry lobbyists aka bribes are set into place, so as not to rock the gravy train.
OK to reiterate QC is a sham[!] its only goal is to deflect law suits and not to protect the consumer, profit is GOD and your job is at stake, life is a spin on a wheel, good luck with that!
Skippy…brine injections via gang needles to increase weight in meat cuts, off cuts of meat glued together and resold in 4 & 5 star hotel restaurants, 3 second rule in manufacturing and restaurants ie: if it hits the floor and you can retrieve it with in 3 seconds its good[!] out the door to the hungry customer ( can’t take out a tables food a be minus one now can we, that aways ends in a poor tip aka profit.
Some retailers test their ground beef (Costco was mentioned in one of the articles). Be selective where you shop and perhaps the marketplace will help force a change.
There is an interesting article here
http://healthjournalclub.blogspot.com/2009/11/armageddon-bug.html
on how researchers in Australia tried to devise, using genetic engineering a contraceptive virus for mice and instead created a version of mousepox that was incredibly lethal
Solution to symptom: irradiation
Solution to problem, as other have stated, don’t eat ground beef that you haven’t made yourself.
The food companies have disintermediated people from the source of their food. Good part: cheaper food. Bad part: required necessary trust of producers and loss of knowledge of how food is created. I believe people probably wouldn’t eat as much meat, poultry, fish as they do if they knew how most of it is “produced”.
It’s actually very similar to the current securitization crisis. Lower financing costs, but must trust ratings agencies and bankers.
Vegetarianism is the best answer. Plus good for the environment. Plus a little fresh or canned fish.
And let’s now talk about the contamination found in produce. Remember those recent news stories about Salmonella and E-Coli infestations in spinach, jalapenos, tomatoes, etc?
The argument of becoming a vegetarian based on this and similar posts is ridiculous. The main problem to address is the potential contamination of all food sources, whether plant or animal based. Using the logic of eliminating meat as the solution to the meat contamination issue, the logical conclusion to the overall food supply contamination is to just stop eating, period.
Just think of the money you could save!
Did you ever stop and ask yourself where the E.Coli and Salmonella contamination comes from (on vegetables)? Livestock feces run-off! Of course I eat meat and meat itself isn’t the problem its how we produce food. It’s not like it was 50 years ago!
Well often it’s the ‘organic fertiliser’ they use intentionally.
Considering it’s often just unprocessed faeces – aka manure*.
This is the sort of contamination you can’t get from synthetic `inorganic’ fertilisers.
So `organic’ vegetables often need extra cleaning when harvested, particularly if they’re packaged in sealed packages – but then again buying certain vegetables in pre-packed sealed bags is probably unwise to start with.
* also mushed up fishing industry by-products. Hardly a particularly sustainable practice there.
By the way, have you heard about the mercury contamination found in most fish?
As DocRx says, vegetarianism is the best response to a system that is so completely out of control. As these types of stories repeatedly show, the scale of the industry is such that health concerns appear low on list of worries. At the very least, get your meat locally, small-farm sourced.
What was it that Lenin pointed out about rebellion and full bellies?
I was going to say something, but lost my appetite.
Yves, I notice that no one has mentioned that irradiating foods can prevent 100% of bacterial contamination. Irradiation is a safe and proven technology that has largely been kept from the market by the efforts of radiation hysterics [like the Dr. Gufman cited in your TSA radiation article today]. Irradiating food does not make it radioactive, but it does make it bacteria-free. So why not let this process enter the debate? Current inspection techniques rely on visual inspection and procedural compliance; bacterial testing is slow and expensive, and, thus, impractical – it can’t solve the problem.
One other comment: to keep this problem in perspective about 40,000 people die in auto accidents, 30,000 die of the flu and 400 people die from acetaminophen use in the US every year, while E. coli O157:H7 kils very few individuals. Any death is terrible, but we need to focus on the big killers, IMO.
Good point! Why can’t I have my food irradiated if I want? I don’t have any fear of the process.
I also understand that it would make fresh produce last longer, which would be good.
The public will never become “exercised” about this, or anything else while cheap food, cheap gasoline, mind-candy television and mood altering drugs are widely available. The de facto legalization of marijuana is just a continuance of this policy.
Of course, it’s almost a dead certainty that almost all of the above will be come remarkably more expensive in the coming years. Exercise may then ensue.
My (only half) joking comeback when people start bugging me about being a vegetarian has long been “Look, I don’t care what kind of filth *you* put into your body.”
Seems very appropriate…
the whole e. coli phenomenon is due to feeding corn to cows. when cows ate grass, there was no e. coli problem because human stomach acid would kill the e. coli from the cows. however, feeding corn to cows makes the cow’s stomach mor acidic and creates stomach acid resistant strains of e. coli in cows and makes meat dangerous to eat. this is another example of false cost savings. feeding cows corn gets them to market faster but at a much greater risk to the food supply. also, feeding corn to cows reduces critical fats in the food supply which is why there has been an omega 3 craze for quite a while. those critical fats come from the grass that cows used to eat.
America the fascist, from sea to shining sea, from burger to burger.
Re: “If corporate prerogatives cannot be reined in when personal safety is at stake, how will they be curbed when the chicanery and looting is harder to pin down?”
FDIC regulators seem to be “working” over time in the beef and pork industry. I assume that these same inspectors and regulator are providing the same fine services in other industries, like other food industries, health industries, auto safety, education and all those other little things taken for granted. I guess you just have to look at what the Fed and states regulate, then realize the level of inefficiency and corruption, collusion ….. ahhhhh never mind.
Why does toxic ground-up hamburger remind me of toxic financial derivatives that are unregulated? Why is it, that we have all these products and services that provide the mechanism of non-accountability?
That pretty much everything regulatory in the USA has become a joke is becoming more and more obvious.
2 examples:
1) Tire safety
2) A boatload of everyday products sold in the US, but not in Europe.
The take home lesson of these two examples is that multinational corporations that sell to consumers in the US and Europe do not sell identical products, even if they look alike.
For example, (the American ladies among the readership won’t be happy) lipstick A sold in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zeland look exactly the same everywhere. Alas, the “sold in the USA” version may/will contain carcinogens that are forbidden, hence not present in the “same” lipstick sold elsewhere. You can listen to this story, and more, here.
How’s that for a warm and fuzzy feeling brought to you by Madison Avenue and their clients?
That pretty much everything regulatory in the USA has become a joke is becoming more and more obvious.
2 examples:
1) Tire safety
2) A boatload of everyday products sold in the US, but not in Europe.
The take home lesson of these two examples is that multinational corporations that sell to consumers in the US and Europe do not sell identical products, even if they look alike.
For example, (the American ladies among the readership won’t be happy) lipstick A sold in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zeland look exactly the same everywhere. Alas, the “sold in the USA” version may/will contain carcinogens that are forbidden, hence not present in the “same” lipstick sold elsewhere. You can hear this story, and more, here, by clicking on the “Listen To This Story” link.
How’s that for a warm and fuzzy feeling brought to you by Madison Avenue and their clients?
That pretty much everything regulatory in the USA has become a joke is becoming more and more obvious.
2 examples:
1) Tire safety
2) A boatload of everyday products sold in the US, but not in Europe.
The take home lesson of these two examples is that multinational corporations that sell to consumers in the US and Europe do not sell identical products, even if they look alike. The significant difference is that the US version has been manufactured in a “regulation-very-very-lite” environment.
For example, (the American ladies among the readership won’t be happy) lipstick A, made by corporation XYZ, and sold in the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zeland look exactly the same everywhere. Alas, the “sold in the USA” version may/will contain carcinogens that are forbidden, hence not present in the “same” lipstick sold elsewhere. You can hear this story, and more, here, by clicking on the “Listen To This Story” link.
Aren’t we so lucky to live in the greatest country in the world?
I apologize for the multiple postings.
Once I clicked “Submit, the post wouldn’t appear anywhere, so I tried to repost.
Sorry for that. :-(
Thanks, I needed that. Been struggling with a nasty craving for ossobuco. I won’t eat beef at all in the US, since testing bans apply to mad cow too. All those cases are percolating in asymptomatic victims and it will be years before the first cases start shrieking and convulsing.
Eat local, grass-fed, free range, organic. Read the new book by Barbara Kingsolver, “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle”. Watch Food, Inc. and encourage others to watch it.
Just like the banks, the only way the coporations will listen is if you hit them where it hurts, in their profits…
I second that 10,000 times!!!!!
Thank you B –the AVM web site is the perfect antidote to a sad and provocative story and a beautiful introduction to the Kingsolver book.
Read ‘The Jungle’ by Upton Sinclair. The book that started the USFDA. Trust me, you will never eat a sausage again.
does the US know how to enforce ANY regulations at all???