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The High Human Cost of Unsafe Food
I think we need a whole lot more public outrage about unsafe food. Maybe the recent front-page articles in the Washington Post and New York Times will do the trick.
Both tell tragic stories of women who developed hemolytic uremia syndrome in response to eating a food contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. Both reveal the appalling physical and monetary cost of these illnesses. Recall: we also do not have an effective and affordable health care system.
To me, the most chilling part of the Times investigation had to do with the lack of testing for dangerous pathogens. No meat packing company wants to test. Why not? They know the animals coming into the plant are contaminated. They know that tests would come up positive. They know that if they find pathogens, they have to recall the meat.
It's obvious why meat is contaminated. The making of hamburger is enough to put anyone off, as the letters to today's Times attest. In my book, Safe Food, I discuss a study demonstrating that one pound of commercial hamburger could contain meat from more than 400 cattle. The Times' article takes such facts to a personal level. The 22-year-old woman who ate the tainted hamburger is paralyzed from the waist down and likely never to walk again.
Read these articles and you will understand that meat companies will not do what is needed to produce safe food unless they are forced to.
And it's not just hamburger that causes problems. Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has a new report out on the ten foods that cause the most cases of foodborne illness in America. Hamburger isn't even on the list. Instead, it's leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts, and berries.
So how come Congress isn't forcing all food producers to produce safe food? Could it be because there isn't enough public outrage to counteract industry pressures and make Congress act?
Bill Marler, who represents both of the victims profiled in those articles, is begging Congress to put him out of business.
His message is clear: get busy and pass meaningful food safety legislation, right now, before it is too late.
I'm hoping these articles and the CSPI report will be seen by senatorial staff who will urge their bosses to support the House bill passed last spring.
Maybe we need hundreds of thousands of people to deluge Congress with appeals to act on food safety, now.
You would like to do this but don't know how? Easy. Find your own representatives online on the House site and your Senator just as easily. The e-mail addresses are right there waiting to be used.
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14 Comments so far
Show AllUnfortunately, the kinds of food safety laws Congress has been considering tend to favor the big producers who cause most of the problems over the small farmers who tend to have better practices -- because big producers can better afford the cost of compliance.
A far better approach to food safety would be to outlaw CAFO's and severely limit the use of antibiotics in livestock. Excessive antibiotic use is what is causing the emergence of drug resistant bacteria in animal feed lots, and keeping animals in close confinement contributes to the spread of disease.
Absolutely. Nestle's article would do better to specify what she means by "food safety legislation".
If you contact your Senator's office, and are told "Yes, we support the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Food Safety Enhancement Act", you should firmly reject these corporate-friendly bills and insist on focusing legislation where it belongs - on CAFOs - and insist on specific exemption from regulatory burden for small-scale farms and farmer's markets.
I totally agree. I was very disappointed that Ms. Nestle, who certainly knows better, did not point to the CAFO's as the source of almost all our food contamination problems. She also didn't mention Creekstone Farms, a meatpacker who wants to test for mad cow and the USDA won't let them. Some of you probably know of this case that's dragged on in the courts for years now.
And you're right about the food safety bills. They are very scary. One provision is to make it a felony to make a health claim not approved by the FDA.
What's a CAFO?
Confined Animal Feeding Operation
Addressing the problem of disease transmitted by our meat supply is not simply a matter of doing a better job of washing feces off meat. CAFO’s--feedlots are one example--today represent standard farming practice in the U.S., while the E.U. has become increasingly skeptical of them because of their links to disease.
In Omnivore’s Dilemma Michael Pollan writes, “Eating feedlot beef takes a heroic act of not knowing or of forgetting.” He points out that E. coli was not seen before the early 1980’s, but now it thrives in the guts of 40% of U.S. feedlot cattle (in comparison, in New Zealand, where only a few cattle are finished in feedlots, incidence of E. coli is extremely low or nonexistent). Virtually all CAFO cattle are sick because of their diet, mostly corn. By acidifying the cow’s rumen with corn we’ve broken down one of our food chain’s most important barriers to infection, says Pollan.
Compounding this situation, three-fourths of antibiotics created in the US are used in CAFO’s, leading to antibiotic resistant superbugs. CAFO’s produce polluted water and air, toxic wastes, novel and deadly pathogens (they have been implicated in the appearance of bird and swine flu). They are exempted from most clean air and clean water laws. They transform what could be a source of fertility into toxic waste. They are often the source of contamination of other agricultural products, like leafy greens.
CAFO practices also increase the risk of mad cow disease being transmitted to humans. CAFO’s feed the cattle beef tallow and blood products and non-ruminant animal proteins such as feather meal and chicken litter, chicken, fish, and pig meal. Bovine meat and bone meal is also being fed to the chickens, pigs, fish that are fed to the cows. In the U.S. today, however, animal testing for mad cow disease (which, for humans, has a long incubation period) is virtually nonexistent. At the same time, the CDC has refused to impose a national requirement that physicians and hospitals report cases of the disease. In countries where cattle are mainly fed outside on grass pasture no cases of mad cow disease have ever been reported.
CAFO's represent another instance in the U.S. today of how short-term financial interests of a few powerful companies succeed in undermining the health of our citizens, livestock, and environment.
From the article; “And it's not just hamburger that causes problems. Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has a new report out on the ten foods that cause the most cases of foodborne illness in America. Hamburger isn't even on the list. Instead, it's leafy greens, eggs, tuna, oysters, potatoes, cheese, ice cream, tomatoes, sprouts, and berries.”
Note that three of the food items on this list are also real problems for those with food allergies; eggs, oysters (shellfish) and cheese and ice cream (dairy). The other two food groups are gluttonous grains (wheat, rye, barley etc.) and legumes like peanuts. In the New York Times article it noted that Cargill added bread crumbs to their hamburger patties yet the contents were listed as only “beef” with no allergen warning of wheat.
In the early 70’s as a teenager and college student I worked at a little mom and pop grocery store that had its own meat department. High choice grade beef was purchased by the quarter and the large cut of beef was then cut up by the owner of the store into cuts, cuts of beef were then sliced, or sawed if the cut contained bones, into steaks and roasts.
Excess fat was trimmed from the beef and reserved to be ground into hamburger. The owner of the store bought frozen blocks of lean (range) beef from Argentina which we cut first into slices then the slices were cut again into ¾ inch thick sticks. The fat trimmings from the high choice grade beef were then ground with the frozen lean sticks of lean beef. We then ground the mixture again and adjusted it fat/lean mix so it was uniform.
The people doing this were the owner of the store and 3 or 4, 18-21 year old college students. He taught us how to make hamburger and how to break down the meat saw, meat tenderizer, meat slicer (lunch meat) and hamburger grinder to clean them. The rate of pay was the minimum wage plus a dime for every six months experience you gained and during the school year you worked 20 hours a week, but back then minimum wage was a lot better.
While the lean range beef was from Argentina it was from the hind quarter of a single animal while the choice beef was from local meat packing plants and was distributed by local meat wholesalers, worst case scenario the meat in our hamburger was from four different animals. To show how times were different back then the meat was sliced on a wooden butcher block that was scraped clean several times a day and the meat processing area was not refrigerated, on the other hand meat was taken from the large walk in cooler, sliced and placed in the refrigerated display case always in less than five minutes.
There was a broad opinion that this little (even by standards back then) grocery had the best meat department in town. Also all of the cuts of meat were sliced in full view of the customers behind the refrigerated meat display cases..
interesting reading...thank you...
And best of all, the fat was not loaded with hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and herbicides. And it probably had more omega-3 fats.
Over 95% of all our illness caused by Average American diet being 50% fat.
Forget the small stuff, cut out the high fat impossible to metabolize stuff, and run for daylight.
Note: In 30 years raised a family of five on a diet with 10% of calories fats, and not one penny on doctor bills. As a lifestyle educator, everyone I helped had the same results.
DIET: For breakfast fresh fruit over oatmeal. For dinner a stew of beans, brown rice, vegetables, and salad
If you eat meat go low fats. No dairy products please.
Dear Madhoosier---
In my corner of SE Indiana we still have an old fashioned grocer who practices by those standards you describe. Very popular market for miles around, and despite the big-name markets nearby (Kroger, Wal*Mart, Meijer), the only place I would buy anything called beef. They also sell locally-raised brown eggs and produce (while I must say that this summer the sweet corn was way below prior years' quality...). They still retain the refrigerated meat display cases. You can't just grab the meat; they have to weigh it out and wrap it for you in "butcher paper," case by case. Personal service, like at certain small markets I recall from my callow youth in lower Manhattan back in the early 60s, when I was working for big banking institutions and living in Mafia controlled neighborhoods. Thank God for the Italians in America!
How's that for blowing stereotypes? They permitted my wife and I to live among them despite our obvious Midwestern prejudices. Back then I had no idea that I came from several generations of southern Hoosier hardscrabble farmers (Perry County, really rough terrain and now largely part of the Hoosier National Forest). Assimilationists might be better off studying their own particulars rather than believing in the proverbial American "melting pot." My parents evolved out of WWII as academics who thought that Academia would transcend the conflicts they inherited and tried to forget. Life didn't turn out that way. My father, a scientist, died young and had no idea of his background. My mother, a refugee from Hitler, only later in her life spent years traveling to Europe to discover her amazing background.
Eat lentils. They are quickly cooked and with added veggies and a little olive oil and bits of meat provide plenty of variety. Think global, act local.
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Old Man River,
I am fortunate to have a little mom and pop grocery near me here in north central Indiana that has an old fashioned meat department like the one you describe. Times have changed, instead of buying a quarter of beef they buy boneless cuts that they slice into steaks and roasts. They grind their own ground round and ground chuck and have local brown eggs also.
My ancestors settled in Tippecanoe County in 1818 and some of the original farmland is still in the family.
Wal Mart had sweet corn at ten or fifteen cents an ear most of the summer and made it really tough on the local growers of sweet corn who usually get $3.00 a dozen.
Nearly all of the beef I buy these days has been saturated with liquids making it impossible to use it as stir fry as the skillet fills with water and instead of frying it goes through a stage where the liquid is cooked off making it more like poached beef than stir fried beef. Who wants to pay six bucks a pound for water then use lots of excess natural gas to boil it away? It’s the same with chicken and pork, as soon as it gets hot excess water fills the pan. While I'm sure this practice is profitable in the short run, in the long run it is going to drive consumers away.
NPR did a follow-up with the author of the NYT article. He said e. coli thrives mainly in feces, and the production lines at the slaughter houses are much too fast to allow the thorough cleaning that would wash the feces and the bacteria off.
Kind of startling to think we're such gluttons in this country that the demand for burgers is so high we can't be bothered with cleaning it first. He did mention specific numbers regarding production which were absolutely staggering, but which I don't remember.
He also said the gov. banned that strain of e. coli from meat, but left it up to the producers to determine whether they were obeying that ban. So who was bribed for that kind of regulation?
Madhoosier---
Your culinary experience with stir-fry comports with mine exactly.
You write: "...instead of frying it goes through a stage where the liquid is cooked off making it more like poached beef..."
I have found this process also true of most hamburger while I know this has not always been the case. The result is almost inedible.
Also, if you study the chemistry of some of the liquid additives in otherwise "fresh" meat you will discover that these are actually detergents being used as preservatives by altering the water chemistry. The expiration dates on these meat products are almost meaningless.
***
My paternal family migrated by flatboat barge to southcentral Indiana from Kentucky around 1811, after one of the Treaties of Paris by which Indiana was legalized for white settlement. (Wiki "Treaty of Grouseland"; it will blow your mind as it takes you right to the Indian Wars of Tippecanoe and Tyler, Too!) My branch of the extended Indiana family sold everything during a major recession after the Civil War, when Joseph Smith III came through southern Indiana and converted many to RLDS (Independence MO branch) Mormonism. The church had arranged for farm purchases in northern Missouri where the soil was much richer. Several dead relatives of mine published extensive memoirs. Their rural economy was almost cashless.
As late as 1957 when I spent two weeks on my grandparents' farm in southcentral Iowa they were still living a relatively primitive rural life as were most of those around them. When my grandmother got ready to cook a chicken she didn't buy Tyson contaminated crap. She went out to the back yard, grabbed a hen, hacked its head off with an axe to a stump and then whirled the bird over her head to drain the blood, came back to the kitchen, scalded the feathers and gutted it, and that's what we had for dinner.
When my grandfather square-mowed the clover-silage crop into rows and the young rabbits would try to escape I would run them down, grab 'em, snap their heads off painlessly, my grandmother would dress them and that's what we ate along with homegrown potatoes and veggies. Anything "canned" came in a Mason jar.
We are being poisoned by today's food-chemical system, and until this issue is addressed there will be no solution to the so-called "health-care crisis."
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