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Report Says Contaminated Meat Is in Supermarkets
It is a frightening picture: beef contaminated with toxic heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics making its way into the nation's supermarkets.
Beef contaminated with toxic heavy metals, pesticides and antibiotics is making its way into the nation's supermarkets, according to a new report. (Photo: ABC News)
Phyllis K. Fong, the Agriculture Department's inspector general, looked at how beef is tested for harmful substances.
According to her new report, inspectors charged with checking cattle for disease and meat for contaminants were, "unable to determine if meat has unacceptable levels of... potentially hazardous substances [and do] not test for pesticides... determined to be of high risk."
The inspectors also failed to test beef for 23 pesticides, the report says.
The study -- entitled the National Residue Program for Cattle Audit Report -- says there are no standards for how much of certain dangerous substances, such as copper and highly toxic dioxin, is too much for someone to eat.?? As a result, meat containing these substances has gotten into the nation's food supply, it finds.
The report says the health danger to people who eat this beef is a "growing concern," and calls for better coordination among the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to ensure the safety of the country's meat supply.
"When it comes to this particular issue of these foreign chemicals, pollutants, antibiotics, things like that -- they haven't been doing enough, that's what's clear," says Patty Lovera of Food & Water Watch, a consumer advocacy group.
The audit report, which took place in 2007 and 2008, cited instances when inspectors found beef containing excessive levels of contaminants, but declined to recall it.
"I think the thing that was most alarming was when lab tests were failed, there was no real concerted effort to recall the failed supply," says Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack.
The report also found that the metal copper has made its way into American beef.
Often a waste product from industry, it can seep into the water that's fed to cattle.??
In one incident in 2008, Mexican officials refused a shipment of U.S. beef because it contained more copper than Mexico allows.
America has no such restriction.
Copper can be dangerous if consumed in food over the long term. It is known to cause jaundice and kidney failure and can even be fatal.??
"The Mexicans refused the meat that was going into their country yet there was nothing that could be done to prevent American consumers from being exposed to that," says David Acheson, former managing director for FDA Food and Import Safety. "That certainly is totally unacceptable in my book!"
Toxins In Your Meat?
The government bans nine different antibiotics from use in beef cattle. Thirty-five others are allowed if they've cleared out of the animals' systems before slaughter.
But the audit found instances when inspectors detected antibiotics in beef, but didn't issue a recall.??
When consumed in food, anti-biotics have the potential to trigger allergic or toxic reactions in some people and to lower resistance to bacteria.??
In a statement released today, the National Cattlemen's Beef Association expressed their support for the recommendations.
"It is critical that the federal government continue funding food safety research at a high level, focusing on the validation of safety systems and process controls to reduce any potential hazards," the statement reads. "While the U.S. beef supply is extraordinarily safe by any nation's standards, we take seriously any potential food safety concern."
Additionally, unlike with bacteria such as E. coli or Salmonella, cooking meat thoroughly not only does not kill the harmful substances, it can actually break them down into compounds that are even more harmful.
Still, Vilsack says Americans should be assured that steps are being taken to address these problems. He says that overall, the nation's beef supply is safe.
"We're asking the suppliers of beef to do a better job of keeping a better eye on repeat violations of suppliers so they are in a position to go back to farms that are providing beef that is not right--to correct the situation," he says.
41 Comments so far
Show AllIt is not just Mexico turning back US meat because it deemed unsafe. Russia, China , Japan and the EU have all started turning back US meat because the Standards are so low.
South Korea, too. We're quickly running out of countries that will accept our agricultural products.
*sigh*
Drop meat, people. This is only going to get worse.
I have some news for you. Meat production is a business and no governmental agency is going to fuck with the profits of any corporation if they want to have their jobs the next day.
It is agribusiness that writes the standards for what is safe for public consumption, then the FDA puts their stamp on it. They have only one stamp: OK.
Visit a slaughter house sometime. If they let you in to see the filthy, inhumane, careless goings on you will never eat meat again.
You said it, Nietzche, although not the way I would. Temple Brandon has written about this. Also, is it Alzheimer's or Mad Cow disease? The resultant conditions are too similar. Since government is in service to corporations there is no way of knowing. Better to err on the side of caution.
Peace,
Jack Chase
Actually, its Temple Grandin, not Brandon.
Thank you, BreeMass, I know better than spouting off before doing the homework. Going from memory is not my best way. That ol' free association thing. I'll look it up before writing next time.
Keep keepin' me honest. I'm good with that.
PeaceTruthBeauty!
Jack Chase
The USDA Federal meat inspectors have been handcuffed from doing their job for too long. My dad worked for the USDA back in the early 80's and friends of the family continue to work in this field today. I also worked for 4 years at a processing plant and was appalled at the things that these companies would try to get away with.
Back then each slaughterhouse and meat processing plant had at least 1 inspector on site during operating hours. I have been told that today these same buildings don't have onsite inspectors and the inspectors now have to inform the plants of when they will be there and what they are going to be inspecting.
The meat industry can not be trusted to police themselves and the Federal government has got to make this a priority. All our politicians and their own families eat the meat, chicken, seafood and vegetables that are being processed by these mega food corporations. You would think that their children and grandchildrens health and future would be more important than the money they are being paid from the lobbyist.
Meat with toxins, genetically-altered vegetables that look great but are tasteless, unpronounceable chemicals in our water supply, cigarettes, alcohol, unsafe cars--you get the idea. The corporations are trying to kill us.
Sioux Rose
TOM: Not until they charge us for expensive tests, a variety of basically useless treatment options, and insurance plans that can't reverse the impacts of these cumulative exposures. Disaster Capitalism works wonders when so much profit can be derived from human bodies! So they won't kill us... just yet.
Ms. Rose;
As you point out, we're surrounded: bad food, bad health care and bad bankers. They're all running a game.
Here's my game: I sign up for every new credit card that comes in the mail. Then, one at a time, I max them out and make only the minimum payments. The balance keeps growing of course because the interest,fees, etc. always exceed the minimum payment.(That's their game plan).
Then I open another one and do the same thing. Given my age, I'm going to leave them all with huge unsecured, uncollectable bills. If I juggle it right, I could bring down half the damned banking industry.
And when that bad food and bad health care does me in, I'll have the satisfaction of taking some of the parasites with me.
(Uh, don't try this at home. It's not Clark Howard approved.)
Eat yer meat or ya won't get any pudding!
I have got to stop eating meat. I'm old, and old habits are hard to break. Of course all the other food is undoubtedly contaminated as well.
Try this:
Place all your processed food in a pot with ten gallons of water and a rock.
Boil for three days.
Throw everything else away and eat the rock.
(From an old New England recipe for seagull.)
Snoop: ... "Throw everything else away and eat the rock."
Tip: Small beach and roadside pebbles go down easier and your teeth don't get so jaggedy and broken down. Sometimes can be found in the bellies of stewed seagulls and crows.
/cm
P.S. Loved what you wrote, Snoop. A good laugh admidst the tears for this lovely world so filled with absolutely unnecessary chaos and suffering is needed and welcomed everyday.
Safe? No one believes this government any more.
This is just like playing Russkaya ruletka at the meat counter.
It's beans and rice, fruit and vegetables for this kid.
It's recall you don't hear that will kill you.
Jack Chase said "Temple Brandon has written about this."
There is an interesting chapter on Temple Brandon, who designed a more 'humane' chute for animals entering the slaughter houses, in one of Oliver Sach's books. I'd also recommend seeing Frederick Wiseman's great documentary "Meat".
It is "Temple Grandin".
She eats meat and insists that it is necessary for her health. I would agree. We are omnivores, and inventing a new physiology is just so much bullshit. Beans and rice are a nice meat substitute for meals here and there but not for seven days x 3 meals and around the calendar. Vegetables are great food and essential. I just wish restaurants didn't promote one or the other food group (protein | vegetable); How about a square meal:
protein vegetable
fruit whole grain
Save the desert for some holiday or sometime when you just need more calories.
Paul McCartney tried to fund a vegetarian cycling team (early 90s). These experiments always fail. There are the odd individuals who succeed on vegetarian diets, but I bet problems can be found after long-term vegetarianism. Strength and power sports are a better test of vegetarianism than endurance sports. I will bet there are more successful gay athletes (male or female) in strength and power sports than there are successful vegetarians (Sorry it is hard to test, due to culture covering over gay participation in sport).
Anyway, I hope we can get the meat supply and ag practices cleaned up.
I like to be a "vegetabletarian" as Steve Solomon calls it. Center your diet around whole grains, fruits and veggies and have meat once a week. My good friend just got her master's in nutrition science and says the same thing. We do need animal protein in our diets for optimal function, but we don't need much of it and we certainly don't need as much as is in the average American diet. The nice thing about only eating meat once a week is that I can afford to buy the more expensive (more honestly priced) humanely-raised meats that aren't laced with all this crap!
Thanks, Trask. My error. See reply to BreeMass below.
Peace,
Jack Chase
"I will bet there are more successful gay athletes (male or female) in strength and power sports than there are successful vegetarians."
What a ridiculous thing to say! Although I defend your right to say it!
Upton Sinclair's The Jungle comes to mind. It appears not much has really changed in this horror industry since Sinclair's literary expose. They've tweaked the profit mechanism of the deadly trade a bit, and quietly doped the sirloins with deadly chemical, pharmaceutical, biological secret ingredients. You are what you eat, and literally tens of millions of Americans evidence this as they are some of the most unsightly and unhealthy people on the planet!
"America the Mythical loves backyard barbecue. America the Real services the myth with hogs from Gulag-Ag. The coastal plains and piedmont of North Carolina, and now many other states, are pocked by vast pig factories and pig slaughterhouses. People living there sicken from the stink of twenty-five-foot deep lagoons of pig shit, which have poisoned the water table and decanted nitrogen and phosphorous-laced sludge into such rivers as the Neuse, the Tar-Pamlico and the Albemarle. Ammonia gas burdens the air. In North Carolina, it is as though the sewage of fifteen million people were being flushed into open pits and sprayed onto fields, with almost no restrictions. That's where the millions of pigs’ worth of manure go."
The complete article is @
http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn04022010.html
I think that we are seeing a process of natural selection being played out here, where those who are paying attention and studying the evidence are changing their diet and lifestyle choices to have optimum health and quality of life. Those who do not will suffer the consequences of their choices.
If you buy your meat at a store where they don't sell meat that's been pumped up with hormones and antibiotics, etc., you're far better off, imho.
. . . provided, of course, that THEIR suppliers are telling the truth. Plain sorry fact of the matter is that the organic food industry is just as poorly regulated as the non-organic food industry.
Very true. Its always best to buy meat from a store that you trust to do the background and buys from farms who can verify their status. this is harder in some places than in others, but a lot of local food co-ops are particularly good at this. Farmer's markets are also a great place to get humanely raised healthy meat directly from the source.
Tom Vilsack was here in Japan yesterday. The Japanese are not budging. Make it safe or don't ship it!! Clear enough right? I've sent this article along to a few offices. It's not that difficult of a problem to solve! Geeesh!! Well, if I were President anyway. Well, I'm off to have some delicious Yakiniku!!
"We're asking the suppliers of beef to do a better job of keeping a better eye on repeat violations of suppliers so they are in a position to go back to farms that are providing beef that is not right--to correct the situation," he [Vilsack] says.
There's a big part of the problem right there. Suppliers don't give a fuck if there's no cost to them for crappy food. Vilsack and the government need to get off their fat asses, hire more inspectors, and start enforcing the goddam law, and slamming these s.o.b.s who who're getting rich off hurting and killing people. And this is a prime example of why the conservatives and their lower taxes/small government mantra have their heads up their asses.
American survival tip # 87:
Leave your raw meat in the sink when you go to bed and set your alarm for 2am. When it goes off, sneak into the kitchen and check the meat. If the cockroaches aren't eating it, you shouldn't either.
My Scoutmaster taught me that. Among other things.
That's good! But what do you do if you don't have any cockroachers? I haven't seen one of those nasty things since I left Texas nearly fifty years ago. I've got a lot of ants though, and having seen the way they go after dead beetles and other small dead things, I'm sure they'd find their way into my sink and the meat.
Snoop: Ditto to my remarks to your first post. Only now it's two laughs.
Keep it up. Jesters have always been important for providing balance to "the Court and the Kingdoms."
/cm
I used to eat frozen Lima peas. When the store stopped stocking them I complained. Yesterday I went shopping and voila! Lima peas. I stocked up.
When I opened the package and dumped them into a sauce pan with water I was shocked to see almost as much stems, leaves, and unidentifiable trash as peas. The water was dirty.
I had to wash the peas and pick out the trash. The price had gone up. The quality was much inferior.
Who can we complain to? Letters to the FDA or the company will get you a polite form letter; if they can't fob you off that way they simply ignore you.
1. Store.
2. Company.
3. Elected vermin.
And look for something else to eat meanwhile. Do local or organic growers work for you where you are and with what you have to spend?
Be safe, don't eat anything with a face!
Or anything with big sad eyes!
Or anything towards the top of a heavily poisoned food chain?
Imagine, Mexico has tighter standards for beef than we do. Yes, we do need to eat meat for our health. Buy local. Buy from your farmer's markets. Look up your local farms. In Central Massachusetts we have an online food coop where we can buy from local producers of grass-fed beef, pork, lamb, goat and chicken. These animals live outside. The cows eat what they are meant to: grass. No hormones, no chemicals, no antibiotics. Yes, it's a little more expensive. So, eat a little less of it. It's full of Omega 3-s and all sorts of good stuff. Yummy! Turn your back on supermarket meat!
I have known lots of healthy vegetarians.
(Bravo to the coop!)
Cows walk all around my house every day. They eat grass, get no hormones, no indiscriminate use of antibiotics. Still I watch them down at the creek when it's hot and they all stand in the water to keep cool.
They don't bother to go up onto a hill to take a dump. They don't bother to go upstream to drink either.
Lots of people eat a diet based on starch with colorful veggies on the side. They get along fine.
You say we "need to eat meat for our health" because you "want" to eat meat. Admit it.
I haven't eaten any meat (including fish or chicken) for 20 years, my husband for almost 30, and people can't believe we're in our fifties. We don't take any medication and do physical work for a living. We don't need no stinking meat. We quit dairy and eggs about 10 years ago and both lost weight immediately. It also helped alleviate sinus trouble and we sleep alot better knowing we're not contributing to the suffering of living creatures.
hmm.... i have read about many triathaletes being vegetarians/vegans. they seem great without meat. my daughter gets all of her protien from everything she eats. NO MEAT! I seem to be feeling better than i ever have in my life. NO Meat for the last year. but hey, you better follow the FDA food pyramid if you want to be healthy. Meat and dairy at the top.
Give me a break, what a scam!
grow a garden.