The primary concern in my last post was centered on the UDSA's lack of oversight of the slaughterhouses and grinders and the fact that every year in the US people are sickened by E. coli contamination in primarily ground beef products. I find your defensive tone interesting, particularly your assumption that if someone chooses to not get onboard with the "Big Beef" industry and their CAFO practices, they are somehow a "hippy". I'm not a hippy, but I am in the foodservice industry and my wife is a professional chef, combined we have over 45 years of experience in foodservice; we share a love of food and our education about food and our industry is a continual process, we aren't getting our information from Time, Vanity Fair or Mother Jones.
Let me break down a few things you posted:
"Next time you purchase an organic cut, think about the animals that suffered or died unnecessarily because this market niche requires even the simplest of preventative medication be withheld."
This assumption is false, medication can be given to orgaically raised cattle and it can still be certified as organic, once administered, the animal cannot go to slaughter for 6 months to allow the medication to work it's way out of the animals system.
"..if you're scared of the benefits CO treatment offers for the shelf life of beef products, you had better find a way to stop breathing too because you inhale 4 to 5 times that amount of carbon monoxide with every breath."
Like most of us, outside of choosing where we live, we have little control over the air that we breathe, but we can choose what we eat. I understand that CO gassed beef looks nicer longer, please tell me the benifit this is for the consumer? Here's a great question, you have two packages of ground beef, one was ground 3 days ago and the other was ground 3 weeks ago, they were both gassed with CO so the 3 week old package looks as fresh as the 3 day old package, noting the package dates of each, which package are you going to buy? So tell me again the benifit of CO gassed beef for the consumer?
And don't think I didn't notice that you didn't make note of the ammoniated beef destined to be ground that I mentioned in my last post. Why are slaughterhouses and grinders doing this? For the safety of the consumer or to mitigate their losses? I would hope that it's for both reasons, but I suspect the later to be their primary concern, they are in business to make money afterall and lawsuits do cost money. Personally, I prefer to keep my ammonia ingestion to a minimum, how about you?
"...every fruit & vegetable you bring in your home needs to be scrubbed & soaked in chlorinated water for at least 15 minutes to kill most of the bacteria it contains."
Interesting that you mention this, it allows me to point out another failing of the USDA. Up until the September of 2007, raw almonds were allowed to be sold throughout the US, but earlier in 2007 several people around the US became ill and the cause was tracked back to contaminated almonds. The USDA traced the contamination back to the producers and inadequate cleaning practices of their machinery causing the almonds to be contaminated with Salmonella. The USDA's solution, fumigate all almonds with propylene oxide; classified by the EPA as a "probable" human carcinogen, propylene oxide is banned from use in the European Union, Mexico and Canada, it was once used as a race gas additive but since has been banned by the NHRA as too dangerous to handle. Yet, the USDA mandated it's use to fumigate almonds as a way to cut down on contamination, instead of mandating stricter cleaning practices by the producers and doing the inspections to make sure the producers are cleaning their machinery, they allow the comsumer to ingest a "probable" carcinogen and former fuel additive.
I'm really not surprised by the lack of oversight of the food industry by the USDA, they are understaffed and under prioritized and Big Agra and Big Meat corporations pay our elected representatives and their Washington lobbyists to keep them that way. The current head of the USDA, Tom Valsach, was a former schill for agribusiness biotech giants like Monsanto, further exasperating the USDA's "bought and paid for" image, some real "Hope & Change" there...
Last edited:
