apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Well, it would help a lot of the majority of beef cattle in this country weren't held in pins where they're up to their knees in their own poo. Since, you know, e coli lives in poo. Just a thought. Oh, and if we stopped feeing cattle so much corn, which disrupts the acidic balance in their stomach, which would otherwise kill most of the e coli.

I only buy beef (and most of the rest of my meat) from local places that I know. It's more expensive, for sure, but I also don't eat a ton of meat. I've also started grinding my own meat.

I'm sorry. I just got on my little soap box. I'm preaching to the choir, here, I know.

Ever since the first e. coli scare, I've avoided most ground beef. I'm especially horrified by the bulk-pack "chubs" of beef - like the previous poster, I could get on my soap box, but I won't.

Yet another reminder of why I don't eat meat. Eating the carcass of another animal is just nasty.

Last I heard, the FDA is going to start allowing beef containing e coli to be irradiated and accepted rather than rejected. Obviously I don't know the details but that's just nahsty. It's pretty in-line with our mentality these days though. We just sterilize our environments, our water, our bodies, our air and everything is clean, clean, clean. No worries! I just don't like the idea of poo-poo meat.

Michael Pollan writes in "Omnivore's Dilemma" about the feed lot ground appearing to be dried soil but actually compacted manure that is dried and kicked-up just like dust. So those dusty dirty animals' hides are actually draped in manure dirt. Sometimes that dirt will be absorbed through the pores of the animal's skin and back into it's flesh from what I understood. EEEW.

So I wonder if it's better to assume that the beef is "guilty until proven innocent." If it were up to the FDA the words "rare," "medium rare," "medium" and "medium-well" would no longer exist when it comes to describing the cooking of beef.

Well, I suppose this quote says it all: "Dean Danilson, chief of food safety at Tyson says.... 'Taking a dirty animal and turning it into food - from the time of the cave man, that has not been an easy process.'

Yep, meat is made from dirty animals, people. How about not eating meat? That's one way to stay safe and help the planet as well.

Ever since I started buying organics, I've avoided beef except on rare occasion when I eat out. I know there's organically raised beef out there, but it's not cheap. I've got a source for ground bison that's reasonable and raised by a farmer who will tell you all about how he raises them. Much better, IMO!

Irradiating meat is a reasonable way to decontaminate it. Irradiation kills bacteria in the meat without the need to wash and vacuum it. Also, why is everyone so up in arms about manure and beef? The same manure goes on all of your organic vegetables, and I do not think anyone bothers sterilizing those, we just wash them with water and bite right in. At least we cook the beef.

We only buy free-range, pasture-fed beef. I know that's no rock-solid guarantee of anything, since hey, organic PRODUCE can contain e. coli, but I assume (and hope) that since it comes from a small supplier, it's been slaughtered with a fair bit more caution than feedlot beef.

I grew up on a small farm, where we killed and ate our own cattle, pigs, and poultry. I guess our practices would be called "organic" and "free range" by today's standards, though those weren't terms that people used at the time. For whatever it's worth, no one in my family ever got even the slightest bit sick from eating our meat in decades of doing so.

Doppelganger,

farm kids always seemed stronger and healthier than the other kids.

sure, they often had some pretty tough chores but they were also exposed to a lot of stuff many other kids weren't like e. coli and other germs and lots of pollen.

seems like people are getting sicker easier and faster today with all the flu shots, pneumonia shots, allergy meds, etc. as society becomes more "sterile."

Irradiation has been used for a number of years, already unbeknownst to consumers. The only meats not irradiated are organic. And even irradiation doesn't help anything except ground beef because it doesn't penetrate beneath the outside layer of cells.

Generally, I have beef with the meat industry. They use CAFO (confined animal feeding operations) that are cesspools for bacteria and disease; they defy nature by feeding cows food that is not meant for natural consumption (corn, in order to dispose of what is essentially industrial waste; parts of other cows and chicken) and pump them full of synthetic, genetically modified hormones. Meat lobbyists require organic advertisements to contain the disclaimer that "no substantial difference has been found between meat treated with such substances" (or statements to the like) but we all know that no substantial difference does NOT mean safe. It doesn't just stop there

They "process" meats at a faster rate than reasonably safe when slaughtering, soak them in chlorine solutions after slaughter to kill some of the bacteria, don't test it nearly enough, and never separate it out according to producer (so you never know where a problem started). Any money they spend is too little too late. Consider their income. This is an unreasonable proportion of precaution to profit...

And, in the end, they shift the burden of safety to the consumer... we have to store the meat properly, clean it, bleach our kitchens, not eat it if not cooked to a hot enough temperature... something that never occurs outside of the food industry

So buy organic, buy local, and don't support dirty practices with your money. I could go on and on about the economic impact of such producers, but this is not really the subject here for impact on wages and immigration rights, though this is tied up in it.

I hope to be able to whittle my own food purchases and those of my eventual business to local only when it comes to the majority of meat and produce. I'm not confident that the organic industry won't eventually end up with CAFO's (for meat) of their own.

One CAFO horror story: unusable (live) animals are used as pin cushions for new meds and for experimentation with over inoculating to see what will happen to their meat.

That's an interesting point, Art. I do know that, where I grew up, environmental allergies were pretty much non-existent. I only knew one kid with asthma and hay fever and all that. (On the flip side, almost every one of my siblings and I have stomach problems like GERD and ulcers, probably because of the well water we drank. Sigh.)

One thing about meat contamination that people should know: you're way, way, way more likely to get sick from chicken than from beef, though beef will usually make you sicker because e. coli is generally a worse bug than salmonella. Fun fact!

Here's another fun fact Doppelganger.

You notice on chicken packaging that is says up to 2% or more of water added?

The water is from the cold water chilling system that is used to bring the slaughtered chickens' body temps below 40 f. What's disturbing is that those dirty factory chickens are all taking a communal bath together and they are absorbing all kinds of crap (literally) into their pores such as salmonella.

So I see two interesting things here:

1. Just like beef, we can assume chicken is contaminated.

2. If anyone is good with numbers they could figure out how much the poultry industry is making every year by selling water.

"You notice on chicken packaging that is says up to 2% or more of water added?"

Nope, I haven't noticed, because I buy local free-range chicken, too. ;)

But ew. Everything you've described sounds disgusting. I was actually a vegetarian for years after I moved out on my own, because I quickly realized that store-bought meat was gross and there weren't a lot of other options around in the city I moved to. I've only become a meat-eater again now that I have proximity to the good stuff.

I think local is the key.

Even though they may be water chilling the chicken at least it's done on a small scale with chickens that aren't living on top of eachother.

"A study by the University of Nebraska relays that air-chilled chicken have bacteria counts up to 80-percent lower than water-chilled chickens, extending its shelf life. Water-chilled chicken has whiter skin and a juicier flesh; air-chilled chicken has creamy-looking skin, a firmer texture, and shrinks less when cooked. Both chickens contain the same nutritional value.
But some industry experts think air-chilled chicken won’t evolve beyond a niche market." quote- http://www.meatanddeliretailer.com/content.php?s=MR/2005/02&p=5

Most everyone still water chills the chicken even if it is organic. Air chilling is a more expensive process.

In Europe, much of the chicken is air-chilled and you'll find chickens sitting out at room temp. in open air markets.

btw-do you have any information linking GERD to well water? that's big in my family too. Don't know what good it would do though this late in the game!

Art, re: GERD and well water... the only source I have is a study I came across a few years ago. I looked for it now, but I can't find it online.

I was just re-reading the original entry, and realized that I missed the main thrust of the post:

"There have already been 20 Department of Agriculture recalls of beef this year - just one short of the record set in 2000."

The thing is, that doesn't mean meat is more contaminated than ever. It just means that companies are doing more recalls. Given that, believe it or not, the FDA can't force companies to recall food products -- recalls are entirely voluntary -- maybe we should take the attitude that more recalls are kind of a good thing? (Just trying to be a "glass is half full" person over here.)

Buy it local so you know the farmer and the butcher.

I'm not too concerned since I'm vegetarian :)