Meat Safety: Secrets of the Industry
Meat products are “certified safe” by the USDA. Most meat-eaters do not question the safety of the meat products because the government has approved them for consumption and because they buy them from clean supermarkets in clean packaging. But are they indeed safe? Food safety – especially meat and poultry – has become more of a public issue since the 1993 Jack-in-the-box food poisoning incident that led to five deaths and five hundred hospitalizations. Public awareness campaigns about handling meat and proper cooking times have been presented in the media, giving consumers a sense of security in the food they ingest. The real problems of meat safety, however, usually do not occur because of improper consumer handling, but rather from unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouse and processing plants. This is where the real problem lies, and it is a problem that the industry does not want the consumer to know.
The American public, in general, places great faith in the government agencies that oversee the quality of their food supply. Most people assume that if the government says a product is safe, it is safe and that is the end of it. Meanwhile, huge businesses and chemical companies have direct influence over these same government agencies, ensuring their financial interests are served over the health interests of the American public. The meat industry is no exception.
The USDA estimates that over 500,000 hospitalizations, nine million illnesses, and 4000 deaths are attributed to tainted meat and poultry. Americans consider their food supply to be one of the safest in the world, yet people are getting very sick from this same food that is approved by the U.S. governement and seen as safe. The reason why so may people are falling ill due to meat they have eaten? Basic cleanliness and honesty.
Line speeds in factories have doubled or tripled since the 1970s, and a processing inspector is often responsible for six to twelve plants! An estimated 200 birds are processed every minute, and 400 cows are killed every hour. Meanwhile, processing machines often rip open intestines spreading waste and feces, while common “baths” spread contamination and filth. Although there are laws and regulations surrounding the slaughter and processing industries, factories and plants often disregard, cheat, or outright lie to get around these limitations meant to protect human life. Additionally, workers are often fired for reporting unsanitary or illegal conditions or events, and plants find multiple ways to process rejected meat behind the inspector’s eyes.
Examples of unsanitary conditions and illegal activities are many, and a 1995 USDA records report reflects conditions in the nations largest beef and poultry plants. These conditions include the following:
-Facilities hose down equipment, ceilings, walls, floors, etc, splashing dirty water onto product or contact surfaces. Water temperature/chlorine requirements are not respected, and contaminants are merely spread over a larger area.
-products are dropped onto the floor and are returned to the processing line without even being rinsed.
-employee bathrooms are often reported as being unusable, and toilets often back up and spill onto the floor.
-pus and fecal material are found on meat, conveyers, workers, and the floor. Plants skip trimming of contaminated parts (as the law requires) and rinse the meat instead.
-Abcesses are not trimmed. Hide, hair, ear canals, and teeth are also found in meat products. Diseased, cancerous, tuberculoid, etc., animals are sent for processing, even after being condemned.
-inspectors retained six tons of ground pork bound with rust and 14,000 pounds of chicken speckled with metal flakes that were packaged and ready to be sent to a school lunch program.
-rancid meat is smoked or marinated/breaded to disguise slime and smell
-managers argue with inspectors – for example, ground meat was returned from a school lunch program, and the manager insisted it could not have fallen on the floor even though it was mixed with cement, gravel, and wood chips.
-a quantity of good product is kept on-hand, and when a product fails testing, a piece of the good product is substituted for the retest so the tainted product will “pass”
-on a survey given to inspectors, 210 of 327 said that there had been episodes of contamination, such as feces, vomit, and metal shards, that they had not taken action. 206 of the 210 reported that this contamination happens daily or weekly.
Wheres the beef? On the floor! On the conveyer belt contaminated with pus and feces! In a storage container growing maggots! And between the hamburger buns on your child’s plate
