Trail of E. Coli Shows Flaws in Inspection of Ground Beef

[hippywife]

I'm still reading this article, but I suspect it's going to confirm what I already know from other sources such as Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and Diet for a Dead Planet by Christopher D. Cook.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=2&th&emc=th

[hippywife]

1. From the article:

Very, very telling:

The retail giant Costco is one of the few big producers that tests trimmings for E. coli before grinding, a practice it adopted after a New York woman was sickened in 1998 by its hamburger meat, prompting a recall.

Craig Wilson, Costco’s food safety director, said the company decided it could not rely on its suppliers alone. “It’s incumbent upon us,” he said. “If you say, ‘Craig, this is what we’ve done,’ I should be able to go, ‘Cool, I believe you.’ But I’m going to check.”

Costco said it had found E. coli in foreign and domestic beef trimmings and pressured suppliers to fix the problem. But even Costco, with its huge buying power, said it had met resistance from some big slaughterhouses. “Tyson will not supply us,” Mr. Wilson said. “They don’t want us to test.”

A Tyson spokesman, Gary Mickelson, would not respond to Costco’s accusation, but said, “We do not and cannot” prohibit grinders from testing ingredients. He added that since Tyson tests samples of its trimmings, “we don’t believe secondary testing by grinders is a necessity.”

The food safety officer at American Foodservice, which grinds 365 million pounds of hamburger a year, said it stopped testing trimmings a decade ago because of resistance from slaughterhouses. “They would not sell to us,” said Timothy P. Biela, the officer. “If I test and it’s positive, I put them in a regulatory situation. One, I have to tell the government, and two, the government will trace it back to them. So we don’t do that.”

[beac]

2. I love the excuse "We don't test because we might actually find something." Pathetic.

I endeavor never to be a smug vegetarian, but articles like this one certainly make me feel content with my choice.

Still, it makes me angry that anyone has to worry that any food he or she may choose to eat could be dangerous because companies put profits before the health of their customers. :mad:

[hippywife]

3. Not only do people

have to worry about being able to afford healthcare, they have to worry that the cheap food in the grocery can kill or maim them. It's a crap shoot.

Very, very frustrating, indeed.

Hope you're having a fine day, beac. :hi:

[beac]

6. It's a lovely afternoon here, thanks hw!

Today I successfully substituted water mixed with ricotta for the milk in my drop biscuit recipe, so I am feeling wonderfully clever. ;)

Good luck with your Indian adventure! I'll look forward to hearing all about it in your Sunday food-a-palooza wrap up. :hi:

[hippywife]

7. LOL!

I haven't even started yet except for the chicken marinating. Bill's in the kitchen making a pumpkin pie at the moment.

Glad that ricotta worked out for you. Experimentation is half the fun. The other half is eating all the yummies.

[Warpy]

4. One thing that might be at work here

is that the contamination is too low for the trimmings producers to find, but after several days of refrigerated transport and storage, that bacterial count jumps high enough for the grinders to find.

The best things to do if you eat burger are to either buy whole cuts and grind it yourself at home or buy commercially ground burger from a company that does its own pregrind testing and cook it thoroughly, meaning well done if you're not sure of the source, medium well if you are.

[hippywife]

5. An even better thing to do

is to find a small, local producer who you can build a relationship with and trust, if and when possible. Who raises his cattle from start to finish, bypassing the feedlots. There's other factors to the corporate meat producers besides that, like the near-slave labor they work to the bone and intimidate.

It really is a sad situation all the way around.

[Fridays Child]

8. Bypassing the feedlots and feeding grass from start to finish.

The gut of a grain-fed cow is the perfect breeding ground for E. coli 0157:H7.

Another benefit of grass fed cattle is that their meat contains significant amounts of Omega-3 fatty acids. Grain fed beef has almost none.

[hippywife]

9. Hi, Fridays Child.

Yep. We're lucky enough to have a really great food coop here where we can enjoy all kinds of meats without the feedlot being a part of the food chain. It really is a great relief. The more people that go this route, the more economical and available it can become for more people.

Have you read Diet for a Dead Planet? It really is the best book for anyone who wants a clear and concise explanation of American farm policy and especially the meat processing industry.

:hi:

[Fridays Child]

10. Sounds like I should put it on my reading list.

Another good one is The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan.

We get all of our beef and chicken from the farmers' market. The beef is grass fed and humanely raised and the chickens are pastured and humanely raised, as well. It's expensive but we try to eat mostly plant food with only small amounts of animal protein (the way humans are designed to eat). So the meat bill is about the same as, or even less than, when we ate way more meat.

In the face of 24/7 marketing efforts to try to make us kill ourselves on engineered food, it takes serious re-training of the mind and the gut just to survive.

:hi:

[hippywife]

11. I've read nearly all of Pollan's books.

Really great information. Did you see that this season PBS is going to televise a show of his The Botany of Desire? I can't wait to see that! Have you read his book, In Defense of Food? It's really good also.

We've switched to eating meat primarily only on the weekends. We enjoy it more that way, on top of knowing it's cruelty free for the animals and the humans involved.

This is my farmer:

Beef and Pork
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWjnPJsBzzQ

Chickens and Turkeys (this one is a little hard to hear at times because of the OK wind)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pmvu0iySvss

[Fridays Child]

12. You're in OK?

Was born and raised in OkC. Very, very windy, all the time, as I recall. :) That's a great idea to record the family farm notes for YouTube. Smart guy!

[hippywife]

13. Yeah.

I'm south of Tulsa. I was born and raised in OH. Moved here 12 years ago when I got married. Where are you now and when did you leave?

Actually, what he recorded were our monthly producer notes. Some of the producers post notes out, usually via email, about what's been going on at their farms, with their families, and any special product info for the ordering month. Wes is the first to do it via video. LOL Wes is a really nice guy and, you're right, he's very, very smart about this business.

[Fridays Child]

14. In AZ, now.

We left OK when I was in high school. I lived in Tulsa for a couple of years in the '80s and liked it much better than OkC. So much greener up that way. Not so much here in southeast AZ, although this desert is more lush than most people imagine. Still, I miss seeing actual water running year round in riverbeds.

One thing we can do here, though, is put in a nice winter garden. We're planting two kinds of broccoli, two kinds of cauliflower, some cherry tomatoes (in pots that can come inside, if necessary) and some herbs in pots--cilantro, thyme, basil. Don't expect a freeze anytime soon so everything should be good. :)

ETA the Moore movie was great!

[hippywife]

15. Glad you had a good time.

Did husband take the chicken out in time? Have you gotten to eat yet?

There's lots of folks who would enjoy being able to put in that late garden, us among them, but we're already experiencing night temps in the 40's so it's gonna be just getting the garlic planted and putting the strawberries to bed for the winter soon. We let the chicken out of their pen into the garden last week and they've already done a fantastic job of cleaning it up for next year.

Enjoy your dinner and your garden! Can you grow any citrus there?

[Fridays Child]

16. Citrus? Yes, every kind. I've been bugging Mr. Child to put in a couple of trees.

An orange and a lemon. He got the chicken out of the oven right on time. It was delicious! I'll definitely try the cut up lemon, again. Normally, I just quarter an onion and stuff the cavity with that and some sprigs of rosemary. So this was a nice change.

[grasswire]

17. for a real thrill....

...cut a few very thin slices of lemon and slip them in between the skin and the breast meat, along with some snips of herb and some butter. Squeeze half a lemon over the chicken and then dust with kosher salt.

[Fridays Child]

18. That sounds wonderful!

[NashVegas]

19. I'm So Disappointed With Publix Right Now

I have been buying their "market ground beef" because it's ground right there, at the store, and is packed loosely enough that the proteins don't compress and leave you with a tasteless burger.

Last purchase left me with a burger that contained teeny-tiny bone fragments. So small you couldn't see them, but you knew when you hit one.

Guess I'll try Costco's.