Hamburgers

[Guest guest]

Well, I'll answer this after I run over to McDonalds for a burger. . . . . <grin> Blech!!!

 

This is the first year DS has attended public school, and he refuses to take his own home packed lunch. Wonder if he'll change his mind after I make him read this.

 

Disgusting. Making me wish we'd stayed in Wisconsin, raising our own beef, milk, eggs, chickens, pork and lamb.

 

Thanks for posting

 

Heather

 

-

Penny Khaled . A century ago, when hamburgerswere not yet identified as the quintessential American meal, one food critic likened theminced beef patty to "getting your meat out of a garbage can". It's a truth consumers worldwidehad better wake up to before it makes them, literally, sick

[Guest guest]

Dear Herbalists,

This is an interesting web site that Pearl posted...........Love

Penny

(I copied it so that the ones who cannot access the site can read the

article)

Share This Article With A Friend

Featured Views

 

Published on Monday, March 12, 2001 in the Independent / UK

At Last, Americans Swallow the Truth About

Their Burgers

by Andrew Gumbel

 

America has no Mad Cow scare, or at least not yet. It has no

foot-and-mouth epidemic.

Beef consumption is as high as ever, thanks to large part to the

ubiquity of fast-food burger

chains. In fact, to stop any of the innumerable freeway off-ramps

or suburban mini-malls

across the country where fast food proliferates as inevitably as

mould in a petri dish, you'd

never guess anything could possibly be wrong.

 

On any given day, one American in four stops off at a fast-food

joint. Burgers and fries have

become so ubiquitous that they are the meal of choice three times

a week on average – the

majority of them eaten at McDonald's, Burger King, or one of the

other big chains. Last

year, Americans spent a staggering $110bn feeding this habit. Mad

Cow? Most fast-food

customers haven't even heard of it. Does that mean a burger eaten

across the Atlantic is a

burger eaten risk-free? If you read Eric Schlosser's startling

new book Fast Food Nation,

just out in the States and already a best-seller, you certainly

won't think so. In fact, like the

author himself – formerly an unapologetic, unsuspecting hamburger

fan – once you reach

the end of the book, the chances are you'll never want to eat

hamburgers or any other form

of industrial minced beef again.

 

Schlosser describes in horrific detail how the ever more

mechanised cattle and

meat-packing industry is exposed to risk of infection by virulent

pathogens including listeria,

salmonella and a real nasty called E. coli 0157:H7 that can lead

to kidney failure, anaemia,

internal bleeding and the destruction of vital organs. Some of

his findings will be familiar

from recent exposés in Europe.

 

Cattle are fed the processed waste of dead animals, including

pigs, horses and poultry, as

well as myriad animal plant by-products such as sawdust and old

newspapers. (They were

also fed dead cattle, dogs and cats until the British BSE scare

prompted a modest change

in regulations in 1997.) Fecal material regularly spills into the

meat, either because it falls

off improperly cleaned hides as they are pulled off or because

the minimum-wage workers

who pull out the intestines accidentally dribble some of their

contents.

 

At some meat-packing plants, federal inspectors have found cattle

being slaughtered that

are infected with measles and tapeworms. Aside from fecal

material, shipments of raw meat

can also include anything from insects and metal shavings to

urine and vomit.

 

What compounds these problems is the extraordinary consolidation

of beef production in

the United States, largely under the influence of giant fast-food

chains who want every one

of their patties to look and taste exactly the same. Just 13

meat-packing companies control

the industry, and their considerable lobbying sway in Washington

– particularly with the

Republican Party that has controlled either Congress or the White

House for 18 of the last

20 years – has virtually allowed them to dictate their own

industry regulations.

 

As Schlosser writes: " Today the US government can demand the

nationwide recall of

defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals and

foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot

order a meat-packing company to remove contaminated, potentially

lethal ground beef from

fast-food kitchens and supermarket shelves. " There have been two

major public health

scares in the past 10 years, both involving E.coli 0157:H7. The

first, in 1993, affected more

than 700 customers of the Jack in the Box chain, which almost

went bankrupt as a result.

More than 200 people were rushed to hospital, and four died after

suffering heart attacks,

strokes, kidney failure and rapid decomposition of their brains.

 

The second, in 1997, led to the largest food recall in US

history, some 35 million pounds of

beef produced at a Hudson Foods plant in Nebraska. The recall was

virtually useless

because, by the time announced, two-thirds of the meat had

already been consumed.

 

Food industry experts grimly expect some kind of public health

disaster if the system

continues unchecked in its present form. It does not help that

government-funded school

meals include beef bought in bulk from the cheapest, least

health-conscious supplies;

several dozen children have fallen ill from meat supplied by

companies with a track record of

processing diseased or dead cattle and whose plants have been

found to be infested with

rats and cockroaches.

 

The fast-food industry has not reacted to Fast Food Nation –

whose stir has been caused

largely among America's chattering classes, who abhor fast food

anyway – but it has made

some modest moves away from beef and " diversified " . McDonald's

has bought into chicken,

pizza and Mexican food chains. A century ago, when hamburgers

were not yet identified as

the quintessential American meal, one food critic likened the

minced beef patty to " getting

your meat out of a garbage can " . It's a truth consumers worldwide

had better wake up to

before it makes them, literally, sick.

 

© 2001 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd.

 

###

Share This Article

With A Friend

 

Common Dreams NewsCenter is a non-profit news service

providing breaking news and views for the Progressive

Community.

 

 

 

 

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of

which has not always been specifically authorized by the

copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts

to advance understanding of environmental, political,

human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice

issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such

copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright

Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the

material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have

expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information

for research and educational purposes. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes

of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain

permission from the copyright owner.

 

Common Dreams NewsCenter