Topps Meat Has Closed but its Slaughterhouse Hasn't; more E. coli in store?

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http://www.buzzflash.com/articles/contributors/1369


Martha Rosenberg: Topps Meat Has Closed but its Slaughterhouse Hasn't; more E. coli in store?


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Lucky for big meat, state and federal lawmakers have long anticipated the need to protect businesses -- if not people -- when outbreaks of potentially lethal pathogens occur in meat and enacted shield laws. This is why the identities of restaurants and grocery stores in California who served beef from a mad cow in 2003 were kept secret as well as the identities of Texas and Alabama ranches who produced mad cows soon after.

So even as 67-year-old Elizabeth, NJ based Topps Meat Company shuts down after having to recall 21.7 million pounds of ground beef products, it won't snitch on its slaughterhouse like the beaten woman who won't answer, "who did this to you?"

Nor has Wayzata, MN based Cargill Inc., which had to recall 840,000 pounds of Cargill Meat Solutions ground beef products from Wal-Mart owned Sam's Club, named its slaughterhouse supplier or suppliers.

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(Slaughterhouse work is so aversive, inmates released from prisons to work in the Smithfield Foods' Tar Heel plants preferred prison and quit, wrote the New York Times.)

Big meat doesn't want you to know. Having you-know-what in the meat is bad enough -- but showing kicking cows hanging upside down on the kill floor, cows who clearly don't want to die can really kill your appetite.
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there is a neat cartoon too