Beefed-up excuses
For a moment there, I was feeling sorta sorry for Steve Mendell, the president of the Chino slaughterhouse and meat-processing plant that just gave rise to the biggest beef recall in U.S. history. He acknowledged that cows had been treated inhumanely. He apologized. He sounded believable when he explained not only that none of the downer cows seen on a surreptitious video had gone into the food supply, but that it was impossible because they'd never make it up the chute. And it was nothing any beef processor would do because that would just ruin a business.
Well, at least he was right about the very last phrase. Shown a second videotape, Mendell was forced to acknowledge that at least two of the cows had gone into the food supply. It was clearly something a food processor would do. Had done. This much is true: His business is almost certainly ruined.
The strange thing about this recall is that, in all likelihood, there's nothing dangerous about the 143 million pounds of beef. Nothing was ever found wrong with any of it. No one seems to have gotten sick from the huge amount that was certainly eaten before the recall ever took effect. But the window it's given the consumer into how careless both the industry and the watchdogs can be offers one scary vantage point.
How do we know that no one has gotten sick especially when they do not know where the meat went? The USDA keeps making that claim but if you look on the Centers for Disease Control website under salmonella poisoning and E. coli poisoning it becomes very clear that the USDA cannot know if anyone became ill. There are over 1.3 million cases of salmonella poisoning a year in the US and only 30,000 are confirmed with a culture. Only a fraction of the 30,000 cases have they identified the source. There are 10,000s of thousands of cases of E.coli poisoning too where only a fraction are identified or confirmed. Many of the people who received this meat are poor (poor children, poor elderly, poor families, poor Native Americans) and do not have health insurance. Why has the USDA not tested any of the recalled meat? Please stop repeating that no one has gotten sick. We do not know! It would take an epidemiological investigation and that has not been done.
Posted by: Clen | March 13, 2008 at 05:04 PM
Matthew Scully, Christian conservative and former chief White House
speechwriter has some wonderful articles online about this issue:
http://www.matthewscully.com
Here's an excerpt:
"Corporate farmers hardly speak anymore of "raising" animals, with the
modicum of personal care that word implies. Animals are "grown" now, like so many crops. Barns somewhere along the way became "intensive confinement
facilities" and the inhabitants mere "production units."
"The result is a world in which billions of birds, cows, pigs, and other creatures are locked away, enduring miseries they do not deserve, for our convenience and pleasure. We belittle the activists with their radical agenda, scarcely noticing the radical cruelty they seek to redress."
Here's a link to the full article:
http://www.matthewscully.com/fear_factories.htm
Posted by: Phil Os | March 13, 2008 at 08:04 PM
Clen has a good point - a lot of times food poisoning is mistaken for "the flu" or another illness, and only if it gets to the point of hospitalization would it start showing up on the radar as a cluster. For all we know, many children may have been sickened here and there, but because the source was so widespread it didn't reach a tipping point of attention. After all, who would see an outbreak of E.Coli and figure the common factor was the USDA-approved School Lunch Program?
But more importantly, the most irresponsible thing about this "nobody's gotten sick" shtick is that Mad Cow disease, the main reason for the downer prohibition, can take upwards of a decade to show any symptoms. For all we know, any number of kids could now have vCJD and we wouldn't start to figure out the cluster until 2018 or later. This was an extremely serious and dangerous lapse - in addition to the point about the window it's provided on how careless - literally - both the industry and watchdogs are.
Posted by: Cy | March 13, 2008 at 08:34 PM
I agree. That repetition that no one has gotten sick is not evidence of no illness. I have read the incubation period for mad cow disease is anywhere from 8-30 years. The fact that the government hasn't tested the recalled meat is damning to them, as they are afraid to test it. People might also realize that if the proposed pieces of legislation banning downer cows altogether can get passed (while lobbyists who do not wish it passed provide substantial sums to our legislators), you still must face the fact that the feeds being provided to the animals (not just cows) contain animal protein, which again endangers us all. I seriously believe all we can do is stop eating meat. Most of our legislators have been bought off for years by lobbyist money, and the only power we have is the power of our wallets. That, my friends, is a mighty power! Use it.
Posted by: kb | March 14, 2008 at 06:19 AM