Chicken FAIL

Lordy, what next? Another FAIL, you betcha. Just to show I'm not biased towards chickens, (although I am because I secretly openly adore them and plan on raising some, not for eating silly), I've got a loverly article from the LA Times about those extra plumped chicky breasts you might find in your local megamart.

I'll leave you to read the short but informative article and deduce of it what you will. Suffice it to say that your little chicken pieces are being pumped full of salt water and preservatives and you might not even know it. Ah fine print, gotta love it.

Read more...

Beef FAIL

"Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia."

(Um.... how is that entrepreneurial exactly???) The NY Times published a very interesting article about the quality and processing of leftover beef bits. The "entrepreneurial" company, plainly named Beef Products Inc, actually gained exemption from the USDA in 2007 for having supposedly undetectable levels of E.Coli. (Yummy right?) Beef Products became a mainstay meat for fast food restaurants like McDonalds and was widely served in lunch rooms.

"Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated."

As the number of cases of E.Coli and Salmonella tainted meat grows every year, one can't help but think of the children. I noticed the pressure on the quality of school lunches started to accelerate in '09. Hopefully more Americans are shifting their focus more towards better health standards in public institutions.

"School lunch officials said that in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods."

And yet, despite obvious problems, this meat is still being used. You needn't ask why, this answer is plain: BECAUSE IT'S CHEAP. Behold the power of the almighty dollar.
Nuts to the FDA for approving this process, which uses ammonia as a processing agent but doesn't require it to be listed on the label. Ammonia is naturally present in meat, it's true, but injecting fatty and discarded hunks with extra amounts seems obviously wrong. "She can't take much more ammonia sir! She's already loaded as she is!" Besides sometimes smelling like ammonia (enough reason to keep walking) and tasting not-quite-right, I'm not sure how any logically-minded worker or Beef exec didn't have the mind to pause and reflect on what exactly they were doing to FOOD.

I find it absurd that there's so much excess meat, enough to cause a significant loss in profit, that it needs to be chemically treated and sold. I won't rant on how we should, at the very least, shrink the industry and focus on quality meats. I'll save that for another time.

I suggest you go read the article and think for yourself. If you feel so inclined, write to the USDA and/or FDA about this issue. And before you order that drive-thru hamburger, consider this...

"At 6:36 a.m. on Aug. 10, the Beef Products plant in South Sioux City, Neb., started up its production line for the school lunch program. In 60 minutes, the plant produced a batch of 26,880 pounds of processed beef that tested positive for E. coli.
Six days later at the same plant, another 26,880-pound lot was found to have salmonella, government records and interviews show."

That's a quality assurance FAIL if ever I saw one.
Eat healthy and responsibly!

Citation: Quotes and Image
Moss, Michael. "Safety of Beef Processing Method is Questioned". New York Times. 2009: 1-4. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31meat.html 12-30-09.

Read more...

Farm Fishing Fail!

I technically can't call myself a vegan. Though I don't partake in meats, honey, eggs, butter, or dairy, I do eat fish on occasion with a nip of seafood here and there. I've got my own resons for this, and am open for discussion of course :).

However, I do realize the negative impact farm fishing has on the environment and try not to consume seafood from these sources. This is a repost from Vegan.com's blog. I love that the solution is very similar to what happens in many aspects of our existence. Killing all to get some of the bad is a tying theme in movies, politics (think Hiroshima), and even medicine (think chemotherapy). While it's not the SAME thing, this attitude of "I say we take off and nuke the entire site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure." attitude is frightening!

Invasive Asian carp have escaped southern fish farms and are making their way up the Mississippi to the Great Lakes. They eat 40% of their body weight in plankton, which is the same stuff native species of fish eat. So, in theory, the fish native to the Great Lakes could potentially be starved out.

Man-made problem with no practical solution. Environmentalists are concerned with ecological disaster that will result, fisherman are worried about their $7 billion dollar a year industry, and businesses and government are worried about disrupting commerce if the Mississippi/Great Lakes shipping channel is closed to keep the carp out.

I’m a vegan, so I couldn’t care less about the loss of “fishing industry,” which, besides killing animals, is killing the rest of the planet as well. But yet another ecological disaster is not something we need. And transportation issues are a bear to resolve- especially in the U.S. where public transportation is stigmatized and severely underfunded- even though the public and the government know it’s the only solution to the crises of emissions, overcrowding of roadways, and wild habitat destruction. The most practical solution is to close the locks that connect the two waterways. Transportation would be disrupted. Goods would have to be re-routed over land. This requires more trucks on the road and/or trains (and the accompanying tracks if none exist). That’s more roadway crowding, more emissions, and more wild animals killed.

You see where this is going. Somebody is going to think up something drastic. Probably something insane.

The Army Corps of Engineers refuses to close the locks. They “would not close the locks without first studying the possible effects.” Wonder how long that study will take? Let’s hope nothing catastrophic happens while they’re studying.

In response to the Corps’s refusal, this is what “the authorities” have chosen to do:

In the continuing struggle to keep the fish out, Illinois environmental officials planned to dump poison Wednesday night in a nearly six-mile stretch of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal near Lockport to kill off the carp while the electrical barrier is turned off for maintenance. Crews planned to use large cranes with nets to scoop up an estimated 200,000 pounds of dead fish, which will be taken to a landfill.

Man made problem, man made solution. They plan to dump poison in the water. Besides being absolutely heinous, the solution will cause more problems to be solved, yet again, by man. And invariably, ultimately, it’s the animals who do the suffering, are displaced, and are killed. The poison they dump in the waterway will kill every fish in the water, not just the carps, and any other animal in the water. And that includes human animals. The Great Lakes are a source of drinking water for nearly 40 million people. Tonight, the government of Illinois will dump poison in the drinking water of 40 million people to “avert an ecological disaster” and “protect a fishing industry” because the government of the U.S. won’t close shipping locks.

Just another fine example of the genius of civilization.

via yahoo.com

Read more...