Bad News on Beef

How can a consumer who wants to continue to eat beef avoid food from factories that break the law?
That's a very good question. I've written a lot on industrial meat production, and it's very interesting to see how people react. Some people react by saying, "That's it, I can't eat meat anymore." Other people look at this and they put it in a box. They don't make the emotional connection between their 99-cent double cheeseburger and this process that we've seen in the video. Still other people decide they want to still eat meat, but they want to eat meat they feel good about. They want alternatives. Luckily for us, there are some really good ones. There is meat produced in small batches, from ranchers that keep their animals not in feedlots standing in their own manure but in pastureland. They are slaughtered in small plants, just a few head a day. It does tend to be more expensive, but you get what you pay for. What it takes to get a 99-cent double cheeseburger are these kinds of shortcuts: downer cattle and 400 head slaughtered an hour. But cheap food has a very high cost.

How does the consumer know he or she is getting small-production beef then?
I think if you find meat at the farmers' market, and it's grass-fed meat, you are going to meet the rancher there and ask him. Ultimately, that's the only real assurance: talk to the person who has raised the meat. I don't know that natural or organic meat necessarily offers you any assurance that the slaughterhouse is humane. I think you really have to look at smaller slaughterhouses.

What else can the consumer do?
Another thing people who are buying hamburger can do is buy hamburger from places that are grinding it themselves. You can go to your butcher or your supermarket and ask whether they are grinding the meat or buying it ground. If you are buying hamburger from someone who is grinding it themselves, it will [probably] come from just one animal, and that will lower the risk considerably.

Does anyone other than USDA officials visit slaughterhouses? Anyone whose opinion you trust?
No. They don't let anyone in. They don't let journalists in. They only let in the USDA. With the exception of one slaughterhouse in Cannon Falls, Minn., which has a glass wall. The glass wall is there to make the statement: "We have nothing to hide. Everything we do we're proud of, and you can come look."

The Secretary of Agriculture says it's extremely unlikely any of the cattle had mad cow disease. Do we have any idea why these were downer cattle?
We don't know why they were downer cows. But they weren't healthy. Which indicates they weren't well taken care of. This kind of meat is really the bottom of the barrel. But that's what hamburger is. They are probably right. Anything to do with BSE is vanishingly small. The whole exercise is really odd. When you think about it, most of the meat has already been eaten. It's fine for them to say that it is low-risk. It probably is low risk. But they had enough concern about downer cows in the food supply to make them illegal.

What would you like to see come out of this?
The best thing they can do is slow down the lines. In Europe they do 100 an hour, not 400. The downside of really fast lines, aside from the fact that you are just pushing meat, is that you are much more likely to get manure in the meat because you are working so quickly. The reason we have E. coli and other diseases is that these animals come in and there is manure caked on their hides, and as they remove the hides, it has to be done really carefully, and there's an increased risk the manure will get on the meat. It's very hard to work fast and well.

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