Should we trust our restaurants to provide us safe food?

Our bodies are probably a whole lot more resilient (and resistant to disease) than most of us are willing to give them credit for.

Just yesterday I read an article that referenced some of the results of poor hygiene practices engaged in (or, rather, hygiene practices not engaged in) by many employees at different fast food joints.

It didn't discuss any of the rather startling chemical ingredients added to so many of the even supposedly "healthy" foods available at Americans' favorite restaurants.

It didn't reference the lousy--I mean, truly horrific--feed practices followed by the CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feed[ing] Operations; often likened to the inhumane and horrifying Nazi concentration/death camps of the 1930s and early '40s) that supply most of the meat used in the restaurants we frequent. I mean, were you aware that a Pfizer Pharmaceuticals subsidiary has been including arsenic--a known carcinogen--in its chicken feed for years? (How did they justify this adulteration? On the grounds that the arsenic never found its way into the human food chain because the chickens pooped it out before it became incorporated within their meat. Of course, now they tell us that, "Oh! Sorry about that! Hmmmm. I guess it is in the chicken meat, after all!" . . . Oh. . . . Except . . . now wait a second! Where did all that chicken poop go? . . . No! You've got to be kidding me! . . . Nope. The majority of the chicken litter went into cow feed. . . . So did the FDA really think we were being protected from Pfizer's arsenic-laced chicken feed after all?)

But this morning, I came across another article about how the FDA refuses to promote health with respect to the ubiquitous use of antibiotics in animal feed. Such enforcement would be "too expensive and resource intensive," you see. It took them 12 1/2 years finally, to respond to a citizen petition seeking rescension of the FDA's approval of subtherapeutic uses of antibiotics in livestock feed.

The response to petitioners says,

Although we share your concern about the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals for growth promotion and feed efficiency indications (i.e., production uses), . . . FDA is denying your petition.

Why? Two reasons (and, of course, remember that it has taken the FDA 12 1/2 years to come to this conclusion!):

1. "[B]ecause there is a formal evidentiary process that must be followed before new animal drug approvals may be withdrawn. In order to withdraw a new animal drug’s approval, FDA must follow a number of statutory requirements, such as providing the sponsor of the new animal drug with notice that the Agency proposes to withdraw approval of the drug and an opportunity for a formal evidentiary hearing on the matter. FDA cannot withdraw approval of a new animal drug until the legally-mandated process is complete. . . .
   
   "FDA must provide the drug’s sponsor with notice and an opportunity for a formal administrative hearing ("NOOH").
   
   "Because no hearings have been held with respect to the animal drugs at issue in the Citizen Petition, and because the Commissioner has not made any final determination about whether grounds for withdrawal under section 5 12(e) of the FD&C Act have been satisfied, the relief requested in the Citizen Petition cannot be granted at this time."
    
2. "Recognizing that the process of reviewing safety information for antimicrobial drugs approved before 2003, and pursuing withdrawal proceedings in some cases, would take many years and would impose significant resource demands on the Agency, in June 2010, FDA proposed a different strategy to promote the judicious use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals in a draft guidance entitled, 'The Judicious Use of Medically Important Antimicrobial Drugs in Food-Producing Animals' draft Guidance for Industry #209 ('draft GFT 9209'). . . .
   
   "Draft GFI #209 proposes two principles aimed at ensuring the judicious use of medically important antimicrobials in food-producing animals. The first principle set out in the draft guidance is that the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in foodproducing animals should be limited to those uses that are considered necessary for assuring animal health. As set out in the draft guidance, FDA does not consider production uses of such drugs to be necessary for assuring animal health. . . . [I.e., "We agree that the use of these antibiotics is not necessary for assuring animal health. So these drugs really ought not to be used for promoting growth. But . . ." --JAH] The second principle set out in the draft guidance is that the use of medically important antimicrobial drugs in food-producing animals should be limited to those uses that include veterinary oversight or consultation. This principle speaks to the need for the scientific and clinical training of licensed veterinarians in assuring that medically important antimicrobials are used in a judicious manner. . . . [So, again, "We agree with you. However . . ." --JAH]
   
   "Based on feedback this Agency has received following the issuance of draft GFI #209, FDA believes that the animal pharmaceutical industry is generally responsive to the prospect of working cooperatively with the Agency to implement the principles recommended in draft GFI #209. FDA intends to work with sponsors who approach FDA and are interested in working cooperatively with the Agency to phase out production uses of medically important antimicrobials and to transition medically important antimicrobials currently approved for over-the-counter use in food-producing animals to a marketing status that involves veterinary oversight."

Really? The pharmaceutical industry is "generally responsive" to the prospect of phasing out the use of this huge source of revenue because it is concerned for the health of human beings? When the FDA itself, in 1977, found that adding antibiotics to animal feed undeniably causes antibiotic resistance? Is Big Pharma any more interested in human health than Big Tobacco?

Somehow, I doubt it!

(By the way, if you want a virtually identical response--only six and a half years in the making--to a virtually identical petition, you can find it here.)

But getting back to the original point of this post: Sadly, there are precious few restaurants to which you can go where they will feed you all-natural, truly open-range, grass-fed, grass-finished meats.

And I will confess that I haven't yet weaned myself from my favorite hamburgers at certain hamburger joints. But the more I learn about our food, the more I am moving toward that kind of lifestyle. Who wants to be filling their bodies with the kind of junk the FDA, Big Pharma, and Industrial Agriculture want to push upon us?

PS: For the original news release on the FDA decision, please see PR Newsline's FDA Denies Citizen Petitions on Animal Antibiotics.

"The Jungle" redux

I've been sitting on this one for a while.

Ever hear that Teddy Roosevelt tossed his sausage out the window when he read a particularly revolting passage in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle at breakfast one morning?

The Roosevelt incident, I'm told, is apocryphal. But the impact of Sinclair's novel is not. It led to the Meat Inspection Act, the Pure Food and Drug Act, and, eventually, to the creation of the federal Food and Drug Administration.

Well, the New York Times broke a new "Jungle" story on December 30th last year. I didn't see it till a week later when Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com picked it up in his article,
Window cleaning chemical injected into fast food hamburger meat
The gist of the story? A certain company, Beef Products, Inc., has come up with what they thought was a brilliant plan to maximize efficient use of every scrap of beef trimming in their meat processing plants. And so, we are told, a majority of the hamburger sold in the United States, including "beef sold to McDonald's, Burger King, school lunches and other fast food restaurants" is being injected with ammonia. Why? Because at high enough levels, ammonia will kill the E. coli, salmonella, and whatever other bugs might be present in these beef scrapings.

The only problem? Well, actually, two:

1) It takes a lot of ammonia to kill the pathogens.

2) High ammonia content leads to customer complaints about taste and smell.

So Beef Products, Inc., has engaged in a not-so-delicate balancing act as it attempts, unsuccessfully, to fulfill its fiduciary duties related to health while it works even harder to avoid the problems of poor aesthetics.

Here's a summary of the story:

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed [Beef Products, Inc.]’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August [2009] in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

In July, school lunch officials temporarily banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers. . . .

The company says its processed beef . . . is used in a majority of the hamburger sold nationwide. But it has remained little known outside industry and government circles.

Federal officials agreed to the company’s request that the ammonia be classified as a “processing agent” and not an ingredient that would be listed on labels. . . .

Besides the fact that the USDA itself has gotten involved in a cover-up of sorts, reclassifying ammonia as a "processing agent," I think it might be helpful to consider what Beef Products' "processed beef" is really all about.

It's hamburger--"ground beef." Right?

Well. Not quite. . . .

The author of the New York Times article offered this mild description: "a mashlike substance frozen into blocks or chips." A USDA microbiologist, obviously not impressed with the . . . ahem . . . "product," described it a bit more graphically back in 2002. He called it "pink slime."

But what is in this "mashlike substance," this "pink slime," besides the "processing agent" that has now been revealed as ammonia?

Let's see . . .

It includes "fatty slaughterhouse trimmings" which includes "most of the material from the outer surfaces of the carcass" and, along with such "material," since E. coli and salmonella are more prevalent in fatty trimmings than in higher grades of beef, "larger microbiological populations."

And how does Beef Products, Inc. process these "materials"?

Well, they liquefy the fat and use a centrifuge to extract what protein they can. Then they send this mash "through pipes where it is exposed to ammonia gas, and then flash frozen and compressed."

The Times article, I think, makes clear: Beef Products, Inc. has permitted aesthetics to beat safety for many years, and only after the Times pursued the story did the USDA finally decide to rouse itself and reconsider whether maybe Beef Products, Inc. and its strange product ought to receive inspections like all its competitors do.
*******
See what industrial food companies--and the U.S. government--will do to save three cents a pound on beef. Read p. 4 in the New York Times story.

But for another view of industrial food production, see this article from USA Today. --Interesting!