Hamburger Class I Recall - Health Risk: High

It began on Sept. 25, 2007 with a recall of 335,000 pounds of ground beef...

-- BUT --

On Sept. 29, 2007, following "an additional positive product sample reported by the New York Health Department, reported illnesses and findings from a food safety assessment conducted by FSIS at the establishment"

...the recall was expanded to include...

21,700,000 pounds of ground beef!

Yep. You read right. That's 21.7 million pounds!!

And of course, the culprit is -- AGAIN -- E. coli O157:H7

According to USDA/FSIS:

There are currently 25 illnesses under investigation in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania. An investigation carried out by the New York Department of Health in coordination with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, preceded the recall of Sept. 25.

One blogger writes:

E. Coli meat contamination is the result of cow sh** in your meat. Or steer sh** in your meat. Or calf sh** in your meat.

Ummm... I provided the **s for those who might be offended by the word sh**

If you have a strong stomach that can handle sh**, and you're really curious as to how so much sh** can get into so much burger, you really want to read a little history about HACCP and HIMP to find out "who pushed food safety over the cliff." Here's the link.

Don't Let Your Dingell Dangle in the dirt...

Now, if a little bit of sh** happens to splatter on some burger and people get excited enough to recall 21.7 million pounds of the stuff -- why is it ok to dump millions (or billions) of gallons of sh** all over the land?

You gotta wonder what's got into the heads of this powerful group of lobbyists pushing to make sure they aren't liable for any of their sh** ...

I'm talking about this story...

The AFBS -- oops, I mean AFBF (not) -- has joined forces with the likes of Land O' Lakes, National Chicken Council and Tyson to name a few, plus a new group calling themselves -- get this -- Farmers for Clean Air & Water Inc. -- now there's a crock of... oops, my bad.

Anyhoo... the groups above are lobbying for a Dingell (et al) bill to be pushed quickly through that takes manure (the polite word for sh**) out of the Superfund, essentially meaning they can dump their sh** without being held responsible for cleaning up the mess if/should something go wrong.

So if you happen to live downstream from a factory farm, guess what? You gotta rely on taxpayers to clean up any mess if something particularly nasty happens as a result of the farm, since the farm itself can't/won't be held accountable -- if this thing goes through.

All This For Cheap Meat?

You know, I get sooooooo tired of hearing how factory farming is so much more efficient in bringing us cheap meat (and eggs, and dairy, etc.). Cheap for the producers, maybe -- but for the taxpayers and the consumers?

Think about it...

The LA Times reported:

In the first nine months of 2001, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced 60 recalls totaling nearly 30 million pounds of meat.

And now here we have 21.7 million in just a single recall. Add up all the other tons and tons of recalls that have been happening just over the past 24 months. I don't care how you slice it, that's not what I would call efficient by any stretch.

By the way, did you know this...?

"21.7 million pounds of ground beef just happens to be an entire year’s worth of production." According to Dr. Kirk James Murphy, M.D. If you have the stomach for it, you really gotta read his blog on this subject!

If you read through his entire article and the links leading from it, you'll soon realize that buying meat to eat these days is a total crap shoot (pun intended).