E. Coli Spreading Slaughterhouses Allowed to Stay Open

[donsu]

http://counterpunch.com/rosenberg1082007.html


Playing Pattie Cake with Public Health


E. coli contamination in meat is the ultimate example of "crap in; crap out." Not only can Escherichia coli 0157:H7 make you violently sick or kill you, it is a grim reminder of where the beef you ate came from and the fact that the cow didn't die voluntarily.

That's why big meat and the government agencies that protect it want to keep the focus on beef packagers like Topps Foods and Cargill Inc. If the E. coli problem can be blamed on packaging workers who didn't wash their hand or held over day-old meat or didn't wear a hairnet, then no one's going to ask about the other s word--slaughterhouse.

Lucky for big meat state and federal officials have long anticipated the need to protect businesses--if not people--when outbreaks of potentially lethal pathogens occur in meat. That's 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.

-snip-

"My plant in Pennsylvania processed 1,800 cows a day, 220 per hour," says Friedlander and the meat regularly contained, "ormones, antibiotics, hair, feces, cancers, tumors."

Stopping the slaughterhouse assembly line costs about $5,000 a minute, says Friedlander so pressure is intense on veterinarians "to look the other way" and "tacitly demanded" by their employer, the federal government.

-snip-

The Florida cattle plant where a USDA inspector told Slaughterhouse author Gail Eisnitz cattle were skinned while fully alive and his superiors did nothing when alerted?

(it was hard to breathe after reading this - or cry)

-snip-

Big food 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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[BridgeTheGap]

1. Do you ever get the feeling there are people who want

many of us dead? You know, the people who think the earth is vastly over-populated with the human species and is in need of "culling?"
It would be impossible to make this "culling" public policy (unless, of course, you include war) but not impossible to devise means for said "culling" (i.e. AIDS, high fructose corn syrup, GMO foods, high fat diets, tobacco, etc.).

[no_hypocrisy]

2. "The Jungle: 2007"

May have to re-read the Upton Sinclair classic this week-end.

[formerrepuke]

3. "Fast-Food Nation"...both the book and the film: Highly recommended...

they are a worthy update to Sinclair's 'The Jungle.'

[donsu]

4. kicking so more people can be warned

nt

[donsu]

5. kicking because this is important

nt

[RebelOne]

6. Glad I'm a vegetarian. n/t