Guest Post by Hardscrabble Farmer
Yesterday on NPR I caught a news story about a restaurant chain called Chipotle. They are an upscale fast food restaurant that pretends to be the same type of purveyor as Whole Foods, i.e. they market the idea of using farm fresh ingredients without actually using farm fresh ingredients. Those who think about their health when eating fast food- an oxymoron if ever there was one- choose these types of outfits because it allows them to indulge their hunger without actually correcting their previous ignorance regarding the source of their next next meal. It appears that Chipotle accidentally poisoned its customers in the Northwest with E. Coli contaminated beef.
Not their fault, actually since Chipotle did exactly what they were told to by purchasing their products from “well known and trusted” suppliers. In addition to that, they were secure in the knowledge that the purchases of meats they made were all USDA inspected. Whew! Glad the pros are on the job, doing what they are paid to do, insuring our food supply is safe.
It seems, however, that Chipotle didn’t actually have to poison their customers. The day before they did the USDA had issued a recall on close to 80 tons of ground beef that came from- curiously- a USDA facility in Omaha, Nebraska.
As of now the two events are in no way connected except that they are- in both cases the meat was inspected by the USDA, the very organization who’s sole mission is to inspect for things like this. It’s easy to miss 80 tons of contaminated meat, probably came off the line when the inspector was taking a bathroom break.
Keeping meat safe to eat isn’t rocket science. It must be kept clean, it must be used while fresh or promptly frozen or cured, it must be cooked to the proper temperature and eaten soon thereafter. When was the last time you heard of a hunter getting E.Coli? Hundreds of thousand of tons of wild harvested meat is consumed daily coming from less than laboratory condition environments and yet no one gets sick and dies from it. A salad at McDonalds? Bring your barf bag.
For those of you who haven’t got a grasp of how USDA inspections go, or the kinds of plants that can produce 80 tons of ground beef without anyone noticing that it’s got E.Coli in it, it might seem confusing. To someone who is forced to deal with these folks if I want to sell a pound of ground beef to my neighbor, it goes like this- You find a USDA plant that will accept a single animal, usually one that the farmer has known since birth, fed and cared for daily and book that animal for a slaughter date. Most USDA plants will not accept single animals so you have to truck it long distances to one that you think will treat your animal in a humane and responsible fashion, then trust that you will get your grass fed, healthy animal back packaged according to your directions. For this to happen you have to have a relationship with the slaughterhouse, something that takes years to develop. I have been fortunate to find one, a small family run operation about 40 miles away. They are small so the USDA only inspects on certain days of the week and treats them like a red headed step child. I know because I am friendly with the owner and he tells me stories. He is serious and professional and he treats my animals well and I trust him. We never have a problem with the quality of their work or the way they treat our livestock from arrival to pick-up. He stays abreast of his required studies, files HACCP plans, attends Serve Safe Certification classes and maintains good records. While I have never asked, based on my experience I would say that he probably doesn’t turn out 80 tons of meat annually, never mind in a one or two day stretch like that plant that just poisoned all those people. Recently he was told that unless he dramatically increases production and expands his operation, USDA will no longer be able to provide services, thereby putting him and his family and all of their employees and all of their customers effectively out of business. No more high quality, grass fed meats available on the local level, at least around my neck of the woods. As far as I know there hasn’t been a single food borne illness spread by any small producer anywhere in the US in the past decade unless Google has deliberately hidden those search results. The big producers however? They poison people all the time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foodborne_illness_outbreaks_in_the_United_States
And the more involved the USDA gets, the more frequent these outbreaks become.
Funny how just last week we read about the World Health Organization equating the consumption of bacon with smoking cigarettes and breathing asbestos fibers in terms of cancer causes. They would have been better off warning people to avoid USDA labeled products.
To be fair I can’t see how anyone can expect a human inspector to manage quality control of 80 tons of meat per year, never mind per day. It isn’t possible. No system of checks and balances will ever be able to keep an eye on that kind of industrialized food production while also maintaining the safety of the health of the end users. There’s really only one way to insure your best possible outcome and it isn’t the Government or the mega corps with their hair nets and lab coats, it’s local producers that you know and respect. It’s learning to raise your own food and process your own meals with your own hands.
Spot on, as usual.
As HSF points out, We. Are. In. The. Best. Of. Hands.
Just keep repeating that over and over, click your ruby red slippers together and repeat after me.
We. Are. In. The. Best. Of. Hands.
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After all, Magical Thinking as gotten us this far, I don’t see why it can’t continue FOREVER!!!!!!
Anyone remember Bon Vivant Vichyssoise? But then again who would eat soup made in Newark?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_foodborne_illness_outbreaks_in_the_United_States
I think part of the problem is the way meats are being factory processed today.
No longer are there actual Butchers on premises for the majority of meats, they are factory produced and much of the processing is done mechanically instead of by skilled hand with a knife. Mechanical boning, I’ve been told. can scrape the bone surface and introduce contaminants into the meat that would not happen if done by hand. When it happens factory distribution makes it a widespread problem instead of a single local incident.
For the best in meat safety, try to find an actual local Butcher’s shop.
Great article, HSF. That we don’t have more frequent e-coli infections mystifies me.
My first thought on reading your butcher’s plight was Joel Salatin and his Polyface Farms. Joel’s life work is raising and marketing beef, chicken and other livestock. He’s done it without getting tied up in a single government program.
I mention him because he has written many books with a wealth of how-to details. Joel is very much an authoritative leader in the field of “small producer fights big gov – and wins”. One of his books may prove beneficial to your butcher in trying to transition from a USDA certified butcher to ‘something-other-than’.
I hope he can find some information somewhere that keeps him and his family working.
http://www.polyfacefarms.com/
Beautiful article.
“After testing 458 pounds of ground beef from 26 cities across the country, the consumer-safety magazine found that all (ALL !!!!) of it contained fecal contamination bacteria,”
— http://nypost.com/2015/08/24/your-ground-beef-is-probably-contaminated-by-poop/
HF, here is a new marketing slogan for your farm; “My meat got no shit!”. You’ll make millions.
Though maybe not “farm fresh” Chipotle food, I believe, was touted as organic (i.e. not GMO frankenfood or contaminated with ag chemicals). Chipotle represents a threat to someone else’s business model,just like VW……
Are you a coincidence theorist?
@ HSF..Tell your fav butcher to have a thick envelope of cash ready to slip to the USDA inspector next time he comes around. A couple of thousand ought to do it. It worked for the owners of all, and I mean every single one, of the Chinese restaurants in Plainfield, Terryville, Wolcott, Bristol, and New Britain CT a couple of decades ago. The owners were paying off the inspectors, but some inspectors retired and some moved up the ladder and the new inspectors wanted double the money. The Chinese refused to pay and a few were busted to shake up the rest. One owner’s wife came forward with a complaint about crooked health dept. inspectors and the story made the local news for one day and was immediately dropped into the rabbit hole.
There were no investigation, no indictments and no state workers lost their jobs.
Money talks and bullshit walks.
I know many followers of the Chipotle cult. They’ll preach how responsible they are as a company and how their food is so much better and more ethical than the Taco Bell’s and McD’s of the fast food world. Then fully 100% of them go to a neighborhood supermarket and buy chicken, beef, eggs, etc. that all came from factory farms.
Argentina is beef heaven and if memory serves the world’s largest per capita consumer of beef. Out here in the boons, the gov inspection mechanisms are confined to the bigger producers who bring frozen carcasses to be cut up at the market, but the preferred purchase in little villages like mine is locally raised, locally butchered beef that doesn’t come in packets because the shop owner raises his own cattle and the rest comes from locals as well. Ground beef is ground right in front of you when you choose the cut from which you want it. Inspected beef is on sale as well, all in conformity with the law should an inspector show up, but the jungle telegraph warns of his arrival well in advance. The tourists always get this beef. The locals, well, there’s a wider choice, shall we say. In 11 years, I know of no one who’s gotten sick from that beef. The owner wouldn’t still be in biz if someone had and not because of the gov. The shop would likely have had a fire.
Hope the war against real food in the US comes to an end before the beeves are made to wear booties and safety helmets before a gov-approved facility will accept them. A “safe” life can also be a sterile life.
We have a little butcher shop out our way that is located in the country that is a bit of a drive to get to but worth it when we can. They butcher local beef, pork and will carve up your game for you. There is no meat case to make selections from, just a rack of spices and sauces for sale and cooler full of smoked hams and pepperoni sticks. There is a list on the wall of all the different cuts of meat you can have with the associated price per pound. When it is your turn at the counter you tell them what you want, how thick or big etc. They write it down on a piece of paper walk it back and hand it to the butcher. The butcher checks it out goes into the locker and pulls out a slab of meat and starts cutting per your instructions, trims it up and slides it over to the packager who wraps it up and brings it to the counter. We pay about 6 bits a pound more than some grocers but it is worth every penny. It is old school way of getting our meat but it feels right, at least we are able to witness part of the process and it was all done with human hands at the local level.
When you are looking at all the packages of meat at the local grocer you really have no idea where the meat came from, who touched it, how many machines touched it, how many trucks it went in and out of, how long it sat on loading docks and who knows what all else as it moved through the supply chain. Kind of makes me cringe when you think about it.
Limestone Meat House LMH is just a gun shot from my land and we have all the same problems as HSF. LMH is USDA inspected but cannot wrap meat without a “not for sale” stamp on it. Legally, the only way to sell meat here is a live animal. It’s illegal to sell eggs, milk, cut vegetables etc etc etc. Now some of TBP probably think I lie or exaggerate but I don’t. When I was a GI in Turkey, I regularly bought meat from a shop that had no refrigeration but thousands of flies. People killed, skinned, etc, in the back lot and the butchers worked on bloody tables inside. The parts you wanted to buy (including genitals, heads, etc) were stuck on nails sticking out of boards on a wall. People collected goat milk and made a slightly salty cheese in about 8 gal galvanized wash buckets; you dipped your hand in and fished what you wanted. Fishermen caught big minnows in nets and boiled them like french fries. All food was served wrapped in newspaper. The vegetables where grown using “honey pot” fertilizer and were huge. Their gardens were “very fragrant” and I always rinsed vegetables in clorox water if I didn’t cook them. I once ate some grey mold cured camel meat that some natives had buried earlier on the sunny side of a sand dune. I believe people still live like this all over the third world.
I drove truck for a local company that serviced Whole Foods (Whole Paycheck). Their claim of all natural, free range, 100% organic, pesticide free food is 100% bullshit. Their meat is notoriously overpriced and if you could see the slaughterhouses it came from you couldn’t tell the difference from them or any other filthy, high speed, animal horror shows, which are all fully staffed with non-english speaking muppets from some third world shithole. I’m sure they wash their hands after using the toilet. Sure they do.
I used to pick up bananas from a warehouse near Boston. These were the “fair trade, all naturally grown, pesticide free” bananas that sell for twice the price of ones from your local supermarket. This warehouse sold the exact same bananas to Whole Paycheck as they did to anyone else. Same with Apples from Western Mass. I will say this, though…they did demand a slightly higher quality fruit, but all of the products were grown the same way in the same kind of conditions. How can a industrial sized apple orchard get away with growing apples without pesticides and make a profit? It can’t.
Whole Paycheck is nothing more than a clever marketing scam and it worked. All those ‘special people’ buying their food there are chumps.
BTW, you can’t believe what these slaughterhouses do to process chickens. Any animal is treated horribly by them, but chickens….Jesus H Christ. The Germans were more merciful at Auschwitz, and I’m not kidding.
You want to know what happens in the dark recesses of our industrial sized economy, just ask a truck driver. If he’s been around, as I have, he’s seen a lot. Some I wish I didn’t see.
@Mike in GA
The Polyface Farm isn’t that far from us. They’re located in a region that attracts the entire DC-metro crowd. Salatin is only successful because he has targeted the DC crowd who can afford his products.
Salatin’s farm has become the ‘weekend outing’ for the upper crust who feed off of DC and all of the teet-suckers. Everyone of those urban/suburbanites are the Whole Food consumers who have plugged into the concept of “fresh foods” and have taken it a step further. I wonder how many of those realize just how expensive their weekend forays to Polyface cost them for the workday bragging rights.
I second and raise you guys a few. I’ve worked for Painter’s Poultry (caught chickens in producers barns where the ammonia was so strong it burned my lungs) and worked the processing line; milked cows for a big dairy (I’ll skip the name) and you work a long line of cows and milkers and when the tit becomes empty the automatic milker drops off sometimes into cow shit and I’d see the green going down the glass lines to the tanks; hauled offal (a fine smell in the summer heat) from a slaughter house one town over (I’d buy the calves born in the lots because ranchers like to bring in old heavy cows about to deliver) to an offal rendering plant (hides, dog food and protein drinks); worked the lettuce harvests where the heads floated in less than pretty water to workers who tore off the outer leaves and put the heads in boxes; sprayed food with slightly stronger than legal pesticides and wondered what went on in Mexico and Asia; talked to friends at the pickle plant that said folks spit tobacco in the vats and rats are found when they empty them; talk to slaughterhouse “butchers” that said tumors go into hamberger; bought noodles from Sams for my larder that later sprouted thousands of weevils. I’m sure if Gen Smedley Butler had been a country boy, he’d have said food is a racket. Produce your own food boys because the Bastards in Chicago that own everything don’t give a hoot what the Goy eat.
Forgot, some pig farmers spray the feed corn they buy by the semi load with strong insecticide so the bugs don’t destroy it all before they use it.