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Shocking News for Meat Eaters

Mike

Well-known member
How many years of ridicule are we gonna be able to survive?

SHOCKING NEWS FOR MEAT EATERS
Peter Knopfler
April 26, 2006

PUTTING THE HEAT ON MEAT

Meat is still a prime source of protein, and of course with 6million folks on Dr. Atkins diet, meat consumption has gone up quite significantly in the past 12 years. Most people shopping in America, and large food vendors abroad, like SAM’s club or COSTCO. In Mexico these large distributors all rely on the USDA stamp or seal of inspected approval. As a kid, we all trusted blindly the government inspection process and never gave it much thought. This news was brought to my attention, and it just rendered me speechless, and that’s not easy to do.

Remember the 1993 out break of E. coli 0157:H7 at Jack in a Box restaurants in the Pacific Northwest sickened 700 people? The Clinton Administration told the USDA to start testing the public meat for the E. coli. The American Meat Institute and six other meat packers sued the USDA in Federal court. The Federal Court wisely upheld the ruling, but the meatpackers never backed away from the central argument.

Since 2000, America’s agribusiness firms have donated over 140 million dollars to candidates running for Congress and the Presidency. In 2004 alone, the McDonald’s Corporation gave 77% of its political donations to Republicans; the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, 81%; National Restaurant Association, 90%. In return the Bush administration and the Republican majority in Congress have worked hard to serve these private interests at the expense of public health.

At the time the when the newly emerged pathogens such as E. coli and mad-cow disease threatened the nation’s food supply, the USDA failed to adopt effective measures to test for contaminated meat, trace it, and recall it, even after the last Canadian mad-cow scare.

Even as far back as the Regan administration, they introduced the “Streamlined Inspection System,” where meatpackers slowly lobbied to inspect themselves with little to no Government involvement. The meatpacking industry opposed any government testing. “If you don’t know about a problem, then you don’t have to deal with it,” so said the fast food industry. G.W. Bush received $600,000 to start off his campaign, with more to come along the way.

In December 2001, the meatpacking industry won an important victory when a federal appeals court upheld an earlier ruling that the USDA could no longer shut down a ground-beef plant because of Salmonella contamination. The Federal court decided that Salmonella is not an adulterant because cooking destroys the Salmonella.

ConAgra’s slaughter houses, one of the largest meatpackers tested for E. coli in June 17 2002, puts out 354,000 pounds of meat daily, possibly contaminated. According to media reports, ConAgra -- because of a few deaths and more sick -- was pressured to recall 19 million pounds of beef; however, only 3 million pounds were returned. Further investigation found that The Greeley slaughter house of ConAgra had produced meat tainted with E.coli for nearly two years. ConAgra conducted their own testing but was never required to disclose the results. Even though the USDA inspectors repeatedly cited the plant for visible fecal contamination of the meat, they imposed no punishments and demanded no corrections. ConAgra, now owned by Swift & Co, everyday turns roughly 5,000 heads of cattle into about 2 million pounds of boxed beef and 800,000 pounds of trim, which is used for making ground beef. Nearby feedlots hold about 200,000 cows.

Another example, Supreme Beef Processors, had tested positive three times for Salmonella while selling tons of meat to the National School Lunch Program. Thanks to the previous Federal ruling, tons of contaminated meat were legally sold with the USDA seal of approval. So let’s infect the kids; yes build up their immunity. What a crock! Selling garbage meat to the kids. As a result, questionable meat was routinely sold to the general public.

We really don’t learn from other people’s mistakes.

Xmas 2003, Yakima, Washington: Infected mad-cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or B.S.E.) is one more pathogen whose recent emergence has been possible by a centralized and industrialized system for producing meat. The infective agent that causes B.S.E. isn’t a virus or a bacterium but a malformed protein know as prion, that accumulates in the brain, riddling it with small holes.

Mad-cow disease first appeared in Great Britain during the 1980’s and its spread was soon linked to a wide-spread common practice of using cattle brains and spinal material, and other potentially infectious body parts, in cattle feed. The British government suspected that the B.S.E. could jump the species barrier and infect people, causing an incurable new ailment, variant Crreutzfeldt-Jakob disease. It strikes mainly young people, inflicts horrible suffering, and kills all those infected by destroying their brains. Six years went by until something was done, but in the mean time delicious beef was sold all over Britain and abroad. A mass slaughter of British cattle had to be done; roughly 4 million with B.S.E. had already been eaten by the public. Almost the entire British population born before 1996 was exposed to mad-cow disease, primarily through the consumption of ground beef and cheap processed meats. What about all those tourists who ate the London broil? Or the cruise ships out of Britain!

This is not the worst of it. Very little is known about Prion diseases, but what is known is that they can have incubation periods of as long as forty years. So twenty years later this disease could surface in many people making the sickness a time bomb. The Bush Administration’s response to the discovery of mad-cow disease in the United States has been a familiar and predictable much like the British; it immediately downplayed the threat to human health.

September 2003: the USDA failed to disclose the true size of the B.S.E. recall and refused to tell the public-health officials in Oregon and Washington where the contaminated recalled beef was shipped. Also, cattle blood may contain infective prions, and poultry is being fed with so much waste from the beef slaughterhouses that the poultry may also be infected. The National Cattlemen’s association strongly opposed any widespread testing for B.S.E., arguing it’s just not necessary. The USDA’s testing program is voluntary, which raises serious questions about its findings.

Dr. Stanley Prusiner has urgently warned public health officials. Prusiner is a neurologist who’s been studying prion diseases for more than 30 years. He coined the the term prion and won a Nobel Prize in 1997 for his pioneering work. He says, “The bottom line is, if we don’t tightly control these prion diseases, we’re going to regret it big time.” Professor Giuseppe Legname, at San Francisco’s Institute of Neuro-degenerative diseases shares the same concern.

The National Cattleman’s Beef Association, the National Restaurant Association, the Grocery manufacturers of America, the MacDonald’s Corporation, and other pillars of the food industry have gone out of their way lately to promote the idea that “there are no good or bad foods.” And if you don’t agree with that idea, there are powerful legal tools at their disposal to persuade you. Opra Winfrey was sued under such a law in Texas after suggesting that mad-cow might pose a threat in the USA, and though she won her case the law still remains on the books. The food industry likes to keep you in fear of lawsuits. Over the years MacDonald’s has threatened legal action against vegetarian groups, The Sunday Times of London, and many student publications, anyone who has negative opinions about Big Mac’s.
 
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