PRINCIPALEMENT SUR LES VIANDES AMERICAINS ET LE POULET USA, MAIS CHEZ NOUS GUERE MIEUX MEME SI ON EN PARLE MOINS...
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It is no secret that in the war against meat pathogens in commercial U.S. meat production, the pathogens are winning. The logical result of the tons of antibiotics Big Meat gives livestock (not because they are sick, but to fatten them up) is clear: antibiotics that no longer work against antibiotic-resistant diseases like staph (MRSA), enterococci (VRE) and C.difficile. Antibiotic-resistant infections, once limited to hospitals and nursing homes, can now be acquired in the community, Florida public beaches and on the highway behind a poultry truck.
Big Meat has found some novel ways to retard
the growth of salmonella, E.coli and listeria on commercially grown
meat, but it does not necessarily want people to know about them and
these substances are conspicuously absent from labels.
1. Chlorine Baths
If you want to know the most problematic
ingredients in our food supply, just look at the items the European
Union boycotts, starting with genetically modified organisms (GMOs),
hormone beef and chicken dipped in chlorine baths. U.S. Big Food
lobbyists are pushing hard to circumvent the European bans, says MintPress News,
especially “bleached chicken.” They claim the “many unwarranted
non-tariff trade barriers … severely limit or prohibit the export of
certain U.S. agricultural products to the EU.”
That’s the idea. In fact, the EU has not accepted U.S. poultry since 1997.
Why do U.S. poultry processors use chlorine? It “kills bacteria, controls
slime and algae, increases product shelf life [and] eliminates costly
hand-cleaning labor and materials” in addition to disinfecting “wash
down” and “chilling” water. “Pinners” in the slaughter facility who
remove the birds’ feathers by hand wash their hands with chlorinated
water to “reduce odors and bacterial count” after which the birds are
sprayed to “wash all foreign material from the carcass.” Meat is
similarly disinfected with chlorine, says one industrial paper, especially because conveyer belts are “ideal breeding grounds for bacteria.”
In a 2014 directive,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service
(FSIS) admits the many uses of chlorine in poultry and meat production,
none of which are required to be on the label under the “accepted
conditions of use” (which limit the parts per million of chlorine
allowed). And it gets worse. The FSIS directive also reveals that
chlorinegas is used on beef “primals,” giblets and “salvage parts” and for “reprocessing contaminated poultry carcasses.” Bon appétit.
2. Ammonia
It has only been two years since the nation’s stomach churned when it saw photos of “pink slime” oozing
out of processing tubes and bound for U.S. dinner tables and the
National School Lunch Program. Looking like human intestines, “lean,
finely textured beef” (LFTB) was made from unwanted beef “trim” and
treated with puffs of ammonia gas to retard the growth of E. coli. While
the company making most of the nation’s LFTB, Beef Products Inc. (BPI)
shuttered three plants and laid off hundreds of employees two years ago, it is since fighting back and has brought a lawsuit against ABC news.
The suit alleges “that ABC launched a
disinformation campaign that had an adverse effect on BPI’s reputation,
and used the term ‘pink slime’ to describe the company’s LFTB even after
it had been provided factual information about the product,” reports Beef magazine. And,
indeed, a quick look at FSIS’s 2014 directive, whose purpose is to
provide an “up-to-date list of substances that may be used in the
production of meat, poultry and egg products,” shows that “lean, finely
textured beef” is alive and well. “Lean finely textured beef,” says the
FSIS, is treated with anhydrous ammonia, “chilled to 28 degrees
Fahrenheit and mechanically ‘stressed.’” Ground beef is also treated
with anhydrous ammonia “followed with carbon dioxide treatment.” Neither
treatment appears on the meat label.
In November, Ag giant Cargill announced it is
bringing back pink slime, with two changes—instead of ammonia, E.coli
will be killed with citric acid and the meat will be identified as
“Finely Textured Beef” on its label.
3. Carbon Monoxide
Eight years ago there was an uproar about Big
Meat using gases like carbon monoxide to color meat an unnatural red
even as it was aging on the shelf. The brown color meat assumes after a
few hours is as harmless as a sliced apple turning brown, says the
American Meat Institute. But like mercury in tuna or ractopamine in
beef, pork and turkey, Big Food didn’t blink or make any changes
because it knew the contretemps would blow over—and it did. Thank you
for your short memory, John Q. Public. “Modified atmosphere packaging” of
meat, using assorted gases, is still a mainstay of meat production and
“safe and suitable” in meat production, according to the FSIS report.
According to the FSIS directive, carbon
monoxide is used as a “part of Cargill’s modified atmosphere packaging
system introduced directly into the bulk or master container used for
bulk transportation of fresh meat products. Meat products are
subsequently repackaged in packages not containing a carbon monoxide
modified atmosphere prior to retail sale.” Carbon monoxide is also used
to “maintain wholesomeness” in packaging Cargill’s “fresh cuts of
case-ready muscle meat and ground meat,” says the FSIS directive.
Why is Cargill’s name actually written into
government directives? Maybe because it’s one of the world’s biggest Ag
players according to Rain Forest Action.
With annual revenues bigger than the GDP of 70 percent of the world’s
countries, Cargill is the world’s largest privately held corporation,
says Rain Forest Action. It operates in more than 66 countries and is
one of a “very small handful of agribusiness giants that collectively
are shaping the increasingly globalized food system to their advantage.”
4. Other “Safe and Suitable” Ingredients You Don’t Know You’re Eating
Unless you’re a chemist, you may not
recognize some of the other ingredients in the 2014 FSIS directive, but
that doesn’t mean you want to ingest them. Take “cetylpyridinium with
propylene glycol for bacterial control.” While cetylpyridinium is a
germ-killing compound found in mouthwashes, toothpastes and nasal
sprays, in meat production it is combined with propylene glycol to
“treat the surface of raw poultry carcasses or parts (skin-on or
skinless).” Yum.
How about, “aqueous solution of sodium
octanoate, potassium octanoate or octanoic acid and either glycerin
and/or propylene glycol and/or a Polysorbate surface active agent,” also
to kill germs?
And, does anyone want to eat “hen, cock,
mature turkey, mature duck, mature goose and mature guinea” into whose
raw meat and tissue has been injected protease produced from the mold Aspergillus for tenderness?
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