Has everybody read Toxin by Robin Cook? It's about the USDA and our food supply

[democrat in Tallahassee]

The characters are fiction but the e-coli threat as described by Cook seems to quite real. It's all about how the USDA is too cozy with business and protects the filthy slaughterhouses, etc. The book is several years old. If you eat meat this book will make you rethink it.
Very scarey stuff.

[Saphire]

1. I haven't eaten ground beef in years because of that book. It really

made me rethink the whole meat thing. Very graphic slaughterhouse depiction.

[MadMaddie]

2. I have always believed the imagination of fiction writers

is a doorway to reality.....

[democrat in Tallahassee]

3. Cook is a doctor and he knows what he is talking about. Frightening,

really.

[SidDithers]

4. Robin Cook has written some excellent reality-based stories...

he also wrote "The Hot Zone", which scared the bejeebus out of me :)

Sid

Edit: my mistake, I was thiking of his book "Outbreak". Richard Preston did "The Hot Zone"

[Shallah Kali]

5. no but I have read how the gov. allows beef spinal matter in people food scares me

they banned (not that enforce the law) it from being used in cattle feed yet it's legal for us humans to eat potentially prion laden crap.

Health and Consumer Groups Urge USDA to Keep Cattle Spinal Cord Tissue Out of Processed Meat
http://www.cspinet.org/new/madcow_protection.html

“While the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1997 banned the use of processed cattle parts in making cattle feed, USDA has not taken adequate precautions to protect the human food supply,” said Smith DeWaal. “U.S. cattle aren’t allowed to eat cattle spinal cord — and neither should people.”

The CSPI petition urged USDA to ban cattle spinal columns and neck bones from processing through advanced meat recovery (AMR) machines. Those machines strip soft tissue (including meat and spinal cord) from bones and produce 40 million pounds of meat paste annually. That meat paste typically is used in the production of hundreds of millions of pounds of hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza toppings, and taco fillings. Although USDA has asked companies to remove spinal cord from the spinal column and neck bones before they enter the machines, the agency rarely checks the industry’s compliance. Since 1998, USDA has tested approximately 100 samples of AMR meat for spinal cord. Of those, nine samples tested positive for this central nervous system tissue.

CSPI also asked the Secretary to review all USDA regulations to determine what other food products might contain small amounts of brain tissue, central nervous system tissue, or other potentially infective materials from cattle and amend those regulations to ban potentially infectious materials from entering the food supply.