Well, that ought to suppress fast food and beef in general sales for a few weeks. I find it amazing that that much meat can make it past inspectors and onto the market. But I'm glad they caught it and announced it at all.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:...is roughly enough for two hamburgers for each man, woman and child in the United States...
Well today I've eaten enough meat for a small family. My community service is done... You're welcome! Posts: 3486 | Registered: Sep 2002
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quote:The federal agency said the recall will affect beef products dating to February 1, 2006, that came from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., which supplies meat to the federal school lunch program and to some major fast-food chains.
posted
Keep in mind that there has been no tainted beef found.
This is purely a precautionary move because the cows in question were weak and/or sick. And generally the weaker sicker cows are more prone to having e coli and what not because they have weaker immune systems and tend to spend more time in their own wastes because they can't move, which is why they're supposed to be kept out of the food supply.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Keep in mind that there has been no tainted beef found.
This is purely a precautionary move because the cows in question were weak and/or sick. And generally the weaker sicker cows are more prone to having e coli and what not because they have weaker immune systems and tend to spend more time in their own wastes because they can't move, which is why they're supposed to be kept out of the food supply.
Also good to note that as long as ground beef is cooked to the proper temperature and proper food-handling measures are used (washing hands, wearing gloves, sanitizing surfaces, etc.), e. coli and salmonella are dead, so not much to worry about.
What's squicking me out is the idea of eating cow that had been pushed with a forklift. *wince*
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I'm sorry, but this seems to me to be a huge waste of animal life. And as Lyrhawn pointed out, there has been no actual evidence of tainted meat.
What bothers me about all these beef recalls is that we're used to dealing with trichinosis, and no one would think of recalling this much pork even though we know for a fact that if it's improperly cooked it will make people sick.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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posted
What are the arguments against all beef being free range? It's far more sustainable, good for the land, produces higher yields, and the quality is better as well.
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I always bought free-range in TX. Alas, here it is less readily available and WAAAAY more expensive, and that is one of the sacrifices we make to live here-- no more free-range beef. Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I eat organic and free range, so it doesn't affect me, but I'm SO glad and surprised this is happening. Great thread.
Lyrnhawn - Does it produce higher yields? I always thought the awful way was the one getting more beef out there.
Posts: 299 | Registered: Jan 2007
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posted
I'm betting that the real concern in this case is Mad Cow and not e-coli. I think that the FDA isn't saying Mad Cow because of concerns it would cause a panic that would devastate the US beef industry.
Proper cooking doesn't destroy preons, thats part of what makes Mad Cow/bovine spongiform encephalopathy/Creutzfeldt-Jakob such a scary disease.
I just hope that the FDA is being overly cautious with this recall and not covering up a more serious problem. Many people think the FDA has been too lax in its regulation of Mad Cow because of pressure from the beef industry. If in a few years there are cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob among people who ate this beef as school children -- it will be a tragedy and a scandal of major proportion.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
I guess the thing that appalls me the most is the cruelty. How can the human species treat other species as though they have no feelings, no terror or agony, when we know they do?
To me that is the gravest sin that we, as a species, commit, and among the gravest sins that we as individuals commit. We spread the responsibility around among us but that doesn't make it go away.
Sin is wrong not because it turns our stomachs or because God says it's wrong, but because it's a terrible mistake. It's doing things that seem like a good idea at the time that are actually bad for you in the long run. Our attitude of treating living creatures as though they are some sort of industrial machinery that we must maximize the profits from is also the same attitude that has us destroying the only planet that sustains human life. If we don't change this, and that means working out our repentance with fear and trembling, we will go extinct.
What will it take to make us see and change?
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: I'm betting that the real concern in this case is Mad Cow and not e-coli. I think that the FDA isn't saying Mad Cow because of concerns it would cause a panic that would devastate the US beef industry.
I wondered if that were the real story too.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
If the issue were just animal cruelty: The individuals directly involved would have faced investigation and possibly prosecution. Midlands-Hollands would have been required to submit a list of new operating procedures to correct the problem, and possibly pay a small fine without ever having to admit guilt about their degree of complicity.
The deal breaker is forklifting downed cattle to facilitate slaughter&processing for human consumption. Legally, all downed cattle are supposed to be examined by veterinarians for MadCows and other diseases. Legally, all downed cattle are supposed to be taken out of the human food chain, irrespective of cause. Midland-Holland chose not to comply. And drew the hammer down upon themselves.
The US exports LOTS of beef. And import bans by other nations due to the appearance that the US doesn't care about shipping out diseased beef would have harmed many individual beef producers and the beef industry as a whole. And thus the strong political incentive to impose the most stringent of corrective actions.
quote:Originally posted by The Flying Dracula Hair: I eat organic and free range, so it doesn't affect me, but I'm SO glad and surprised this is happening. Great thread.
Lyrnhawn - Does it produce higher yields? I always thought the awful way was the one getting more beef out there.
Not if you only count beef. But, integrated farming techniques would use the land to feed multiple forms of animal and the land would be left extremely fertile afterwards, meaning it would be extremely good farmland. If you used a big plot and rotated crops AND animals around the plot, you'd have huge crop yields and a lot of free range poultry and beef. I'll have to look up the numbers. I think the profit margin for current cattle farming methods are higher, I'm not sure, but it's a system that all feeds into itself. America has an extreme overabundance of corn, so we've artificially created a need for it by feeding it to cows, making fake sugar out of it, turning it into fuel, whatever. I think in part if you ended expensive farm subsidies to major corn growers, stopped growing so much, we stop feeding cows with it and it becomes more feasible to free range them and make money off it. It's not just one problem, it's a dozen problems all up and down the distribution chain that keep our current methods employed.
I'm not 100% now that I think about it that yields are higher per acre, but I do know that studies have been done, and that we could easily feed ourselves and export just as much, if not more, by free ranging all the cattle we usually corn feed, and that we have the land to do it on. I'll look into it, but, browse the last page or two of the Green Energy Thread, there was a post a few days ago about this very subject.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
It is against the law to use as food for humans meat from cows that are infirm and have collapsed. There are sound reasons why these laws were enacted, even if we do not always find that the suspect beef introduced into stores is tainted. It is MORE LIKELY to be tainted, and that is the point.
And joke about Mad Cow Disease as some will, it is still a deadly danger that has not gone away. The human form may have a multiple-year incubation period. But then, so does HIV. That really just makes it worse. It can spread more widely, if people do not drop dead from it instantly.
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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I'm surprised so many people are giving credence to mad cow these days. It used to just be my in-laws.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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Oh, Mad Cow is definitely a concern, especially in our lax system.
However, only a certain percentage of the population is vulnerable to it. I think it was something like 10-30% of British? Though I'm not sure on that.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:"If we don't change this, and that means working out our repentance with fear and trembling, we will go extinct."
Tatiana, you certainly have a flair for the dramatic. Why the "fear and trembling." Couldn't improvements be made without necessarily going to such theatrical lengths?
Posts: 655 | Registered: May 2005
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posted
The continuing and growing danger of mad cow disease (Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in humans) is being vastly underestimated, entirely as a result of wishful thinking. Reality is going to come crashing in, sooner or later. Do we have to have it emblazoned on the sky, before the warning signs will be clear enough?
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:"If we don't change this, and that means working out our repentance with fear and trembling, we will go extinct."
Tatiana, you certainly have a flair for the dramatic. Why the "fear and trembling." Couldn't improvements be made without necessarily going to such theatrical lengths?
Fear and trembling is a common religious terminology used to describe the attitude held by the truly repentant person. By it, I understood Tatiana to mean that we must change more than just our practices but also the basic attitudes that allow people to justify such treatment of other living things for the sake of improving their profit margin.
I agree fully with Tatiana. I have been reading a history of the slavery which has heighten my awareness of the depths of depravity that people will justify for the sake of poverty. I sincerely hope that we will one day come to view the cruelty of industrial meat production in the same way we now view slavery.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Isn't it sad that some people can't tell the difference between an actor and a role they have played?
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I keep watching Boston Legal waiting for the phone number to come up so I can buy plane tickets.
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I like his WoW commercials. Though none of them are as good as the Mr. T WoW commercial. I crack up every time I see it.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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posted
I think Animal Cruelty is the least of our concerns. Literally. Also, it's kinda redundant to even mention it in regards to a Meat Processing Plant where they're about to be slaughtered.
Personally, I'm thankful that people are, for the most part, focusing on the objective matters of public safety rather than the (IMO, False) moral implications of 'mistreating' our food prior to slaughter.
Posts: 636 | Registered: Apr 2002
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posted
Um... There's a difference between giving an animal a quick death as humanely as possible so that we may have nourishment from it, and torturing it before we eat it.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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quote:I think Animal Cruelty is the least of our concerns. Literally. Also, it's kinda redundant to even mention it in regards to a Meat Processing Plant where they're about to be slaughtered.
Slaughtering cattle does concern me nearly as much and the cruelty and torture.
I don't know whether or not cattle fear death, I do know they are capable of both happiness and suffering. I have little problem with eating a cow that has lead a healthy, pleasurable life eating grass in a pleasant pasture. But I have a big problem with the hideous life cattle lead in industrial feed lots.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Not as far as I can see. If someone came up to me and said "I'm going to kill you", I would be approximately the exact same amount of upset as if they had said "I'm going to torture and kill you".
Who knows, maybe by being tortured, I'm helping to alleviate some poor person of their passive aggressive, sadistic tendencies. Maybe some other person will live because of me! (that's about 90% joke, and 10% "Hmmm...")
In order to win me over to the "Animal Rights" camp, you would have to convince me that the process has any objective consequences aside from a waste of time (which is enough to keep ME from doing it, but not enough to make me CARE about it). This is in regards to non-endangered species of course. The consequences of potentially extincting a species are far more logical.
Posts: 636 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:If someone came up to me and said "I'm going to kill you", I would be approximately the exact same amount of upset as if they had said "I'm going to torture and kill you".
If this were true, all torture would take the form of death threats. It does not.
quote:In order to win me over to the "Animal Rights" camp, you would have to convince me that the process has any objective consequences aside from a waste of time...
I'm almost certain that this is a primary symptom of psychopathy.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:I'm almost certain that this is a primary symptom of psychopathy.
For every symptom of Psychopathy that I fit, I completely miss another. I'm not a liar or manipulator. My "Political Correctness" is relative to my anonymity and company. I have no criminal predilections that I can tell (clean record). I'm not particularly unreliable and DEFINITELY not untrustworthy. I tend to avoid counter-productive decisions (don't smoke, drink, do drugs, or have sex).
I DO believe, however, that I'm ADD, passive aggressive, and possibly depressed. Add Cynical and Intelligent to the mix and I'll admit that it can look a lot like psychopathy. Of course, I'm not educated to make a REAL diagnosis, but I'm also not predisposed to seeking counsel, so I may never know.
Posts: 636 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Some of the people I live with have heard about this and commented that if they ever went to the States they'd avoid beef entirely, due to the laxer standards. (And the same for cosmetics.) I don't know so much about the comparative standards for monitoring and such, but in that light I'm glad the US is taking active steps on this case. If the home of mad cow disease is leery about US beef, that's not a comfortable thought.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:Not as far as I can see. If someone came up to me and said "I'm going to kill you", I would be approximately the exact same amount of upset as if they had said "I'm going to torture and kill you".
If I were given the choice between being shot in the back of the head one day while walking down the street or being slowly tortured for years, there is no doubt in my mind which one I'd prefer. I'm surprised that anyone would see them as equal. In fact our society is in virtually uniform agreement that torture is a cruel and inhuman punishment which even the worst criminals do not deserve and yet most people in the US do not see capital punishment in the same way.
The comparison isn't quite fair in the first place since cattle aren't told their going to die. In fact there is no evidence that they anticipate their deaths even as they are entering the slaughter house.
Self consciousness means that humans are able to understand and therefore fear death in a way that other animals do not. While I suspect that all animals would generally prefer to live a healthy life than to die, it is unfair to transfer human fears and feelings about death to other animals.
On the other hand we can see in the behavior of animals that they experience pain and suffering in much the same way we do. We can see pleasure and contentment as well. I think that if we can look on and comprehend the suffering of any living thing and not feel compassion for it and act to stop it, it is a grave moral failing.
We all die eventually. If death is in and of itself a tragedy, then so is birth since the one leads inevitably to the other. In my mind it is how we live and not how we die which is important. Hence for me I am far more appalled at the way we treat animals while they are living than the fact that we butcher them to obtain food for ourselves.
Posts: 12591 | Registered: Jan 2000
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quote:We all die eventually. If death is in and of itself a tragedy, then so is birth since the one leads inevitably to the other. In my mind it is how we live and not how we die which is important. Hence for me I am far more appalled at the way we treat animals while they are living than the fact that we butcher them to obtain food for ourselves.
I agree with this here Rabbit. Even PETA agrees that the main thrust of their efforts right now should be in reducing suffering that animals go through in slaughterhouses rather then trying to persuade the world at once to give up meat completely.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
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quote:I think Animal Cruelty is the least of our concerns. Literally. Also, it's kinda redundant to even mention it in regards to a Meat Processing Plant where they're about to be slaughtered.
I think the recall itself is an act of animal cruelty. At 500 pounds of beef per cow, 143 MM pounds of beef equates to about 286000 cows that were slaughtered for no purpose, and an additional 286000 cows that will be slaughtered to replace them.
Posts: 3735 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote:We all die eventually. If death is in and of itself a tragedy, then so is birth since the one leads inevitably to the other. In my mind it is how we live and not how we die which is important. Hence for me I am far more appalled at the way we treat animals while they are living than the fact that we butcher them to obtain food for ourselves.
I agree with this here Rabbit. Even PETA agrees that the main thrust of their efforts right now should be in reducing suffering that animals go through in slaughterhouses rather then trying to persuade the world at once to give up meat completely.
That's what Temple Graundin does. She's cool.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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quote:At 500 pounds of beef per cow, 143 MM pounds of beef equates to about 286000 cows that were slaughtered for no purpose, and an additional 286000 cows that will be slaughtered to replace them.
Considering that a lot of the meat has almost certainly already been eaten, I doubt it.
Posts: 21182 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
Someday, in the New Earth, when we are all completely satisfied with a diet that does not include animal flesh, God is going to resurrect many of the animals that shared the earth with us during history. We may able to communicate with them at least to some extent. So imagine the fateful meetings, when the former meat eaters meet up with the animals whom they ate. Will apologies be in order?
Posts: 3742 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
I don't see why there would be, at least not just for eating them. We're omnivores. Other animals in nature don't, and don't have to, apologize for eating something lower on the food chain. It's the circle of life.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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