Ostrinski showed him that they were the Beef Trust. They were a gigantic combination of capital, which had crushed all opposition, and overthrown the laws of the land, and was preying upon the people.
The Jungle, 1906
Upton Sinclair
In the wake of recent deadly E. coli outbreaks, I think most of us would answer “safe, and flavorful if possible,” but rather, we should be asking the questions: “do you buy frozen hamburger patties or make your own with fresh cuts of beef;” “where do your hamburgers come from and what is in them;” etc. While I had been pondering this subject for some time, two news items - one in the New York Times online on October 3rd, and the other on October 7th in New Times - published while I was on the road brought things into focus for me. The time has passed for excuses and promises from Big Meat and its minions, excuses that ‘production agriculture’ is the only way to feed this country, and that no system is perfect, and promises that they will be even more vigilant in their inspections - Marion Nestle, in a post on the Atlantic blog concerning the New York Time piece, succinctly takes Big Meat to task for their excuses and misdirection. The time has come for us to act by rejecting factory-made hamburgers and ground meat in supermarkets, in restaurants, and in cafeterias.
It was bad enough when we were just being subjected to slow death by corn-fed saturated fat and cholesterol and our water and soil were being contaminated by mammoth feed lots, but now we are being dispatched by increasingly virulent strains of microorganisms in the ground meat we are sold, all the while being told that problems occur because we don’t follow the common sense instructions - 'soak the raw hamburger in bleach prior to cooking it to the doneness of a briquette.' Just as insidiously, Big Ag continues to hide its practices from the public (How can making hamburger patties be a proprietary secret?) or even let them be critiqued, and it continues to push the government to allow more and more self regulation, all in the name of adding a few more cents to its bulging bottom line!
My stop at the Laurelhurst Market in Portland on Friday morning for freshly ground beef was a bit serendipitous. When I arrived back in Seattle, I began checking my Google reader, and Michael Tuohy’s new frontburner post addressed the New York Times’ article E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection. The long article examines the 2007 Cargill hamburger recall that sickened an estimated 940 people, many critically, including 22-year-old Stephanie Smith of Minnesota who may never walk again. The reporter also writes about the attempts to trace all of the sources of the meat and trim that were used by to make the hamburgers. Reading like a twisted work of science fiction, the piece sends chills up my spine, every time I read it.
In The Ethicurean, I found a description of the New Time’s piece, Controversy erupts over Michael Pollan's Poly lecture, about Big Meat’s attempts to prevent Michael Pollan’s scheduled lecture at California Polytechnic State University. With threats by the Harris Ranch Beef Company to cut back financial support of the University’s programs, including a pledged $500,000 for a new meat processing facility, its Chairman David E. Wood wrote to Cal Poly President Warren Baker: “I find it unacceptable that the university would provide Michael Pollan an unchallenged forum to promote his stand against conventional agricultural practices”. Big Meat has all of the money in the world to lobby Congress, to influence universities, and to sway public opinion that everything that they say is true and everything representing a contrary opinion is not only false but against progress, the American Way and plentiful, inexpensive meat. Big Meat didn’t play fair over 100 years ago when it was known as the Beef Trust, and it doesn’t play fair today, so there is no reason to cut it any breaks, or listen to any of its pleas or threats on behalf of jobs, the public, or the solvency of the industry - besides, their numbers and their promises never add up. As Upton Sinclair wrote over 100 years ago, “what they wanted from a hog was all the profits that could be got out of him…” The bonus is that Big Meat wants us to pay for all of the external damage they create by making their ground meat.
It’s been quite a while since I decided to stop buying meat wrapped in cellophane and labeled with no more than a ‘pack’ date and no real information about how old it was or how it had been handled. With ground meat and sausage, I am even more stringent - especially given the recent recalls and the fact that ground beef is often dosed with nitrogen so that it will keep its nice red color long after it should have rotted away. I won’t buy pre-packaged ground beef, and more importantly, I won’t buy ground meat from any market unless it is ground fresh every morning from whole cuts of meat, and I can be reliably assured of its origin. I will not order a burger in a restaurant unless they grind their own meat and can tell me where and how the animals were raised. I can hear the objections: ‘too much work,’ ‘too expensive,’ ‘difficult to find reliable sources,’ ‘hard to find restaurants,’ ‘can’t keep the kids out of the fast food joints,’ among others. This is what Big Meat wants you to think, so that you just keep following old habits. However, we vote with every burger we buy, and if we all just stopped buying, they would stop selling. What about buying a used meat grinder on EBay and making your own ground beef?
If you are being told that you need to cook a hamburger to 160 degrees for it to be safe, you should not be buying that hamburger. Eating these factory made ‘things’ is riskier than playing Russian Roulette. With the latter you at least know the odds and a loss is quick and painless, whereas the next hamburger you buy from Big Meat might lead to an excruciating death or a lifetime of painful rehabilitation. Support your local sustainable farmers, and those butchers and markets that support them and provide full information about their meat. Don’t be fooled by marketing slogans and carefully crafted brand names (‘Oh, if it’s Angus Beef it must be safe!’). ‘Provenance’ and ‘traceability’ aren’t merely buzzwords of the Birkenstock-wearing ‘organic’ fanatics; they are rapidly becoming a matter of life and death.
Of course, we could all band together and file some class action lawsuits against the USDA, the FDA, and maybe even the Congress and the Senate for not providing “for the general welfare,” by failing to protect us from…our own inability to cook hamburgers safely!!!
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