Bad News on Beef

A new life style comes to the life , and also a site calld pubspa has someting about health care and skin protection.

This is a continuous problem. Beef, chicken etc. The only way to control this is for Americans to choose to eat healthy and avoid all animal products. Just don't eat it. It's simple. That will improve your health and help the planet. Or, you can eat it and die. Simple enough. If you choose to eat it then don't whine when you need a triple bypass.

The problem here is in the stockyard, not the slaughterhouse. Mr. Pollan apparently did not consider that piece of the process. The animals go from farms, to trucks, to stockyards, to slaughterhouses. The problem most likely occurred either on the trucks or at the stockyard.

If government inspection & regulation isn't sufficient, consumers may have to become even more aware of name-brands and their safety track records. (In the case of meat you buy in plastic wrapping with no name brand on it, such as ground beef in the meat section, then the name of the store chain, or local independent store's name, serves as the brand name.) When you learn about tainted food products (whether meat, peanut butter, or other food products), staying away from that brand name of that product, at least for a period of time that each of us thinks best (maybe a year?) may send an effective message in the marketplace, not just to that company, but also to ALL companies who will be observing consumer reactions.

Michael Pollan makes several good points here, but the most important is this: in spite of all that's wrong with our increasingly centralized, industrial food system, there are still people out there who are doing it right, and we should be supporting those businesses.

I work for the Eat Well Guide (www.eatwellguide.org), a nonprofit program out of NYC that helps educate consumers on problems associated with factory farms, but more importantly, offers a viable solution--our Guide lists tens of thousands of small-scale, local farms (as well as restaurants, markets and other businesses that distribute their goods). Conscientious eaters just enter their zip code to find good food.

Buying from small-scale local producers is not only safer, but it's also better for animals, workers, the environment, and local economies.

Check out the Eat Well Guide--eating "good" meat not only helps you rest a little easier, but it tastes pretty good, too.

Leave them alone, for heaven's sake. Those cows are mad at us. We wouldn't have "mad cow disease" otherwise. Their lives are at "steak". Now they know how Hansel and Gretel felt when the witch tried to fatten them up.

Scary, very scary. Especially for children!

As a fellow carnivore (I know that's not true) I am concerned about Mad Cow. My studies have shown that Mad Cow is transfered through the cooking of the bone with the meat. As a result, I buy and cook only boneless meat. I have my own grinder to make my own "Fat-free" hamburger from boneless cuts (I bind the meat with BBQ sauce). Cooking in itself will kill most of what can concern us. and keeping a spray bottle of rubbing alcohol on the counter should do the rest. America is a productive country with alot of spoiled mouths to feed. American workers increasingly care less about the quality of the job they produce at work as you can probably see by looking in the mirror. We can't expect our food workers to care about their jobs any more than we care about ours. Caution in all things, cook it well and keep it clean... Good Luck

Beef, it's what's for dinner. Think I'll have a big, juicy steak tonight with a side of bacon.

Slaughter them, chop 'em up, and slap 'em on my plate boys. I don't care how you do it. Just do it.

I love the part, when ask how people respond to the article, it talks about consumers who need to make an EMOTIONAL connection to their cheeseburger, who need to FEEL good bout where their dead cow flesh is coming from. Give me a break! Food=Fuel. If people realized this, there wouldn't be the obesity epidemic in the US because people wouldn't be trying to feel good via food.

And there is no 'humane' way to kill beef or brocolli, as the outcome is still 'death' against its will. Does the process need to be safe and clean? Yes. But humane is simply not going to happen - just more political correctness...

I don't know if I would go so far as to call a journalism professor a "food safety expert," but if he's the guy who will say what you all at Newsweek want to hear... Why not actually get Temple Grandin, who this journalism professor quotes himself, to write you an article about food safety and slaughterhouse conditions? I guarantee you she has seen far more than this guy and would be better able to give an accurate picture of the industry.

And I don't know if I would go so far as to say that cattle slaughtered in small batches are necessarily slaughtered more humanely than cattle slaughtered in big plants. Mistakes can be made in either place; you can screw up with a rifle (which is how a lot of "small" batches are done, by the way) just as easy as you can with a captive bolt.

Furthermore, workers that do make a lot of mistakes in big plants aren't as efficient, so even if plants are money hungry sadists, it would be unproductive for them to keep workers that do a bad job on the kill floor. People that screw up hold up the line. Humane killing is more efficient and therefore more profitable.

And finally, to suggest that the only kind of beef that people should eat is expensive, natural/organic meat is kind of arrogant. It's like saying that if you aren't affluent enough to afford natural/organic beef, and you eat beef anway, you are a bad person that doesn't care about animals. He's nearly making a correlation between economic status and a person's moral integrity.

I think animal welfare is important, and what was going on in that California plant was bad. But it is by no means representative of the meat industry as a whole. Most cattle are raised and treated humanely. And for the record, I have been in a slaughterhouse, and I am not a USDA official. I have a degree in animal science and am working on a veterinary degree, and my recommendation to Newsweek is to get someone to write an article that has more experience in the industry and doesn't place moral judgments on those of us who eat "regular" beef.

Sincerely,
Beef eating veterinary student, non-cow torturer

I don't know if I would go so far as to call a journalism professor a "food safety expert," but if he's the guy who will say what you all at Newsweek want to hear... Why not actually get Temple Grandin, who this journalism professor quotes himself, to write you an article about food safety and slaughterhouse conditions? I guarantee you she has seen far more than this guy and would be better able to give an accurate picture of the industry.

And I don't know if I would go so far as to say that cattle slaughtered in small batches are necessarily slaughtered more humanely than cattle slaughtered in big plants. Mistakes can be made in either place; you can screw up with a rifle (which is how a lot of "small" batches are done, by the way) just as easy as you can with a captive bolt.

Furthermore, workers that do make a lot of mistakes in big plants aren't as efficient, so even if plants are money hungry sadists, it would be unproductive for them to keep workers that do a bad job on the kill floor. People that screw up hold up the line. Humane killing is more efficient and therefore more profitable.

And finally, to suggest that the only kind of beef that people should eat is expensive, natural/organic meat is kind of arrogant. It's like saying that if you aren't affluent enough to afford natural/organic beef, and you eat beef anway, you are a bad person that doesn't care about animals. He's nearly making a correlation between economic status and a person's moral integrity.

I think animal welfare is important, and what was going on in that California plant was bad. But it is by no means representative of the meat industry as a whole. Most cattle are raised and treated humanely. And for the record, I have been in a slaughterhouse, and I am not a USDA official. I have a degree in animal science and am working on a veterinary degree, and my recommendation to Newsweek is to get someone to write an article that has more experience in the industry and doesn't place moral judgments on those of us who eat "regular" beef.

Sincerely,
Beef eating veterinary student, non-cow torturer

While I by no means condone what was happening at this particular proccessing plant, as a farmer I feel compelled to point out a few things that the non-farming public doesn't take into consideration. Is modern agriculture becoming "industrialized"? Yes it is. Why is this happening? There are several factors. Chief among them being that production agriculture is damn hard work for little pay and even less gratitude from those not involved in it. I milk cows for a living. It's a 365 day a year job. No paid vacations, no sick leave, no holidays off, no health insurance. Less than 2% of the population now produces all of the food in this country, plus an abundance for export. Why? Because most people have no interest in doing it themselves for the aforementioned reasons. So do those 2% need to be fast and efficient at what they do? Obviously. Americans enjoy the safest, most plentiful, most affordable food in the history of this planet. When is the last time you walked into a grocery store and there was no food to be had? Think for a second about the quality of life this affords you, the cars, computers, nice homes, vacations, etc. that most of the world cannot afford because they spend half of what they make just to put food on the table. Another factor for you to consider: Our population continues to grow, our land base to grow the food for these people continues to shrink due to MILLIONS of acres lost every year to urban sprawl. The very same people who complain about how their food is produced continue to contribute to the problem by building their houses where a farmer used to grow his crops. How can we go back to the 50's with the cows "frollicking" in the pasture, when there is no affordable pasture for those cows? The only way for that to happen is to place a national moratorium on making babies, halt all new construction on fertile farm ground, and put a halt to immigration. Is this going to happen? Obviosly not. The other option is to outsource our food production to foreign countries such as China. You want some lead paint with those fries? So the next time you feel the need to complain about your fellow farmers and how poor of a job we are doing providing your nourishment, take a second to think about where you would be without us.

I would caution everyone to be wary of ANYTHING that comes from HSUS. They are not an animal welfare organization, they are an animal RIGHTS organization. Their ultimate goal is to make it too expensive, inconvenient and/or illegal to eat animals. They're the same as PETA, they just wear nicer clothes.

Write your congressman today about your concerns.