The Times published this Cargill-damning story a few days ago, set against the narrative of a 22-year old woman whose bout with E. coli-tainted beef paralyzed her for life. Likening the U.S. beef industry to roulette, the writer takes us on a tour of the reasons industrially farmed beef is such an unsound product. One of the best passages follows:
Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen. The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
The article goes on to say that the USDA allows companies to devise their own safety plans. We are not in good hands, friends. I urge you to join me in speaking up and asking questions about our food system while partaking in a local one whose participants and producers you know, or can easily meet.
Stephanie Smith, 22, paralyzed by E. coli
Lest you chalk Stephanie’s condition up to “one in a million”-style bad luck, I submit for your consideration that 940 people were sickened in this same 2007 outbreak traced to a Cargill plant. Remember seeing it in the news? Me either. Funny, the bigger you get, the better PR men you can afford.
Cargill is paying for Stephanie Smith’s medical treatment in advance of any legal settlement. If that’s not an admission of guilt – or at least a playing-it-safe strategy that implicates responsibility – color me stunned.
Visiting Cargill’s corporate website yields this language: Some Cargill products are only approved for use in certain geographies, end uses, and/or at certain usage levels. It is the customer’s responsibility to determine, for a particular geography, that (i) the Cargill product, its use and usage levels, (ii) the customer’s product and its use, and (iii) any claims made about the customer’s product, all comply with applicable laws and regulations.
There is a map of the world showing the company’s ubiquitous reach. One eventually gets to the page that explains everything. No shock or awe here.
geez, sign me up right now. Thank you for this post! I hope every meat eating consumer sees this message in one vain or another.
Excellent post!