Fervor over Filthy Meat

What would you do if you found out your meat had been sprayed with feces, cleaned off, then sold to you?

You’d probably get a little bit upset, wouldn’t you? Maybe you’d even write a letter to the USDA.

Unfortunately, when meat gets contaminated and then sold to the public, it often goes unreported, and consumers are left in the dark with their foul-smelling and potentially deadly beef. Luckily for us, however, there are consumer groups like Food and Water Watch, who aren’t about to let these sorts of things slip through the cracks.

After learning that 493 carcasses at a Swift & Company meat plant had been accidentally sprayed with waste water and then sold to the market as thousands of pounds of USDA inspected meat, Food and Water Watch wrote a letter to the USDA. The letter explained that the sale of this beef was unacceptable, because the waste water that was sprayed on the meat likely contained feces, and likewise made the meat unsafe for human consumption.

This seems like an irrefutable argument, right? Unfortunately, Swift & Company had been able to convince the USDA otherwise, by claiming that with thorough cleaning and testing, the beef could be salvaged and no one would be harmed.

The USDA believed them, and now there are several thousand pounds of beef out there that have been sprayed with water collected on an abbatoir floor.

Even though Food and Water Watch’s letter has not yet provoked a recall of this shipment of beef, we can still cling to the hope that a recall will happen. And in the meantime, we all have the ability to tell our friends about this issue, and make sure that they know to avoid Swift & Company meats.

US Group Angered Over Contaminated-Beef Treatment
(Cattlenetwork.com, 2006)

Check out Food and Water Watch’s website to learn more about this problem and what you can do.

Visit the Eat Well Guide to find sources of beef that haven’t been sprayed with feces.

And watch The Meatrix II 1/2 to get an action-packed glimpse at an industrial meat processing facility.