I've been interested in the topic of food production and preparation for a few years now, but just about 2-3 weeks ago I completed reading Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. I think this was the straw that finally started to nudge me over the edge.
After providing an in-depth history of the origins of the fast food industry, Schlosser delves into the conditions that exist in the Big Food meat packing industry. Quite alarming. Although it's a little disturbing and tough to get through at times thanks to vivid descriptions of what Schlosser saw with his own eyes, I highly recommend this read.
In this book, Schlosser reiterates what I had already learned through other sources (books and blogs by Michael Pollan and Marion Nestle, Food, Inc. etc.). When meat is cheaply mass-produced, cattle are fed unnatural, species-inappropriate diets. These diets contain all kinds of stuff other that the grass and occasional fresh organic grains that ruminants are supposed to eat. At the time Fast Food Nation was written, there was evidence that this feed mix included such things as corn and soy by-products, chicken waste such as feathers and poop, and most disturbingly ground up carcasses of other cows that dropped dead in the feed lots. Eeew.
Through these readings, I learned that when cattle do not eat the grass and plants as nature intended, their digestive systems do not form the necessary natural resistances to harmful bacteria like E. Coli 0157:H7. After this was detected, the remedy for this was not to start feeding cattle a normal grass-based diet. No. It was to treat the cattle with large quantities of antibiotics and keep feeding them the same crap. So, antibiotics were added to the feed. As well as growth hormone to make them grow faster.
According to these sources, large meat-producing companies have a history of employing cheap, unskilled labor in their processing plants to save money. Part of the process is to disembowel the carcass after slaughter. It's not unheard of for an unskilled worker to puncture the digestive tract in this process, spilling its contents onto the muscle tissue that will be cut up and packaged for consumers. See where I'm going with this?
Eric Schlosser flat out says it in Fast Food Nation. "There's shit in the meat."
A factory farm hamburger - think fast food or chain restaurant, boxed burgers at the supermarket, cheap supermarket ground beef in genera, school lunches - can contain the ground up muscle tissue of many, many cows. If one of those cows is positive for E. Coli 0157:H7, think of how many burgers have the possibility of being contaminated. And putting E. Coli 0157:H7 aside for a second, think of the spilled intestinal contents (manure) spewing out all over the meat that is about to be ground up into burgers. ~shudder~
Eric Schlosser published Fast Food Nation in 2001. It definitely raised eyebrows. I was hoping a few weeks ago to learn that much has changed in the years that followed. According to this follow up article by Schlosser "Still a Fast Food Nation" about ten years later, not much has changed.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/12/still-a-fast-food-nation-eric-schlosser-reflects-on-10-years-later.html
I don't know what current conditions are in the Big Food meat packing industry. I'm in no position to speculate good or bad. Right now, I'm just commenting on how it made me feel to read that there was ever shit in my meat, even if it was 12 years ago.
Oh! And if you're wondering about the occurrence of E. Coli 0157:H7 in the burgers, this article hit the news just a few days ago regarding a 50,000 lb ground beef recall due to possible contamination: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/07/31/beef-recall_n_3685744.html
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