From the Consumerist/NY Times
Before you bite into that juicy hamburger, you might want to better understand how the meat industry creates, tests (or doesn't test), then distributes ground beef. A detailed investigation by Michael Moss at the New York Times proves eating it is "still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe."
For one thing, food companies save money on ground beef by buying scraps of meat from multiple suppliers, instead of using cuts of whole meat. Two years ago, food giant Cargill was responsible for an outbreak of E. coli here in the states that left a woman paralyzed in the fall of 2007. The product responsible, "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties," was made from a mixture of meat sources:
Grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
What's more troubling is that although the USDA recommends that grinders test each source of meat first for contamination, most don't because it would eat into profits. That's why Cargill never knew where the bad meat came from, even though it detected E. coli in a finished batch of burgers several months before the 2007 outbreak.
The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.
Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder's discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others.
So does any company put safety over profits? Is there any way to find safe ground beef without having to buy steak yourself and pay a butcher to grind it? Try Costco. For the last 10 years, they've been voluntarily testing all of their meat before grinding.
Craig Wilson, Costco's food safety director, said the company decided it could not rely on its suppliers alone. "It's incumbent upon us," he said. "If you say, ‘Craig, this is what we've done,' I should be able to go, ‘Cool, I believe you.' But I'm going to check."
Costco said it had found E. coli in foreign and domestic beef trimmings and pressured suppliers to fix the problem. But even Costco, with its huge buying power, said it had met resistance from some big slaughterhouses. "Tyson will not supply us," Mr. Wilson said. "They don't want us to test."
That's why Costco sounds like one of the safest bets you can make if you buy ground beef. By comparison, a 2007 survey of grinders showed that only 6% of them followed Costco's safety protocol of testing source meat before grinding, while half of them didn't even bother to test the finished product.
http://consumerist.com/5374428/why-e-coli-still-makes-its-way-into-your-meat-supplyhttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1
2007 was right in the middle of President Bush's efforts to marginalize and deregulate the FDA. As proven again one year later with the outbreak of salmonella in peanut butter, companies do NOT always do what is right by the customer if it will eat into profits in any small way; even something like testing for e coli to make sure the people who eat their food don't get paralyzed.
I'm going to repeat one of the lines in the article again, because it should be the deathknell for any debate into libertarianism
Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli
The greed and contempt for human life in the way of profits is staggering.
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It certainly helps me feel superior.
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You know, instead of investing in a PR department that thinks up new branding stickers to make it seem like it's safer now or from another company when things eventually go wrong.
Ah, reality.
I swear to god, I am SO boycotting the next place that kills me!
They're strongly anti-EFCA, though.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They're just going to grind up your corpse and add it to the meat pool. I mean they have a contract saying it won't be tested.
What I don't understand is that regulation accomplishes the same things as the "Free Market" crowd is seeking. Is their opposition to government, or do they think that some impersonal laws of economics will somehow evolve a "human" consciousness and direct the market toward our perfect utopia?
I'm sure she won't be buying from those suppliers again. That's one customer lost because of bad quality control!
Regulation prevents me from making a FREE CHOICE to not die from information I lacked at the time of purchase about testing methodologies about the item in my hand!
Hard to buy from a company that sells you bad meat if you are dead, after all!
Peanut salmonella for you!
I, for one, am shocked. Why have I never heard anything about this before?
Nooooooo
SHOCKED.
Actually, it's probably not even legal according to the regulations. It's just that we managed to have a president for 8 years who got close to succeeding in fulfilling the Reagan ideal of dismantling any and all government regulations/programs. All the laws in the world won't help if the people in charge of regulating an industry were just 5 months earlier the lobbyist/CEO of a major player in said industry.
What were the other two? I also shop at costo (and love their steaks), and would be inclined to know more.
Avoid the fruit salad/mixed fruit/whatever.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
There was one on Consumerist about how lenient their return policy was (opened print cartridges). I forget the third one. It's just a weird coincidence as we just moved near a Costco and explored it for the first time yesterday (haven't gotten a membership yet, as we are currently car-less).
The thing is, if everyone was informed, the "market" would almost certainly demand more government regulations.
The "invisible hand of the market" argument completely underestimates how much more of a factor price is than anything else.
It might just be citrus from the pineapple (am I the only one to notice that fresh pineapple gets painfully acidic by the time you get to the ones at the bottom of the container?), but it always tastes really bad.
The Asian pears are divine, though.
Then again, that's why the government exists too.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
I wouldn't expect that, for instance, every single person on Earth getting an MD would be feasible, and yet that's necessary to make medical decisions in the face of absolutely no regulation.
They're also not great when it comes to environmental issues, but they aren't the worst either.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
According to Wikipedia, they essentially let the union negotiate for all employees.
so they are basically bizarro-walmart
They aren't particularly delicious, just sufficiently delicious such that you cannot stop eating them. And they come in giant tubs.
http://www.seattlepi.com/business/182915_costco21.html
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Why the fuck don't we have them everywhere?
Walmart, probably, although they do have a model very reliant on shipping centers, so I can see them holding to the coasts (even though that doesn't explain their absence in the south).
There just aren't room for them in the market when there's a Walmart serving every couple thousand people in the red states.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
http://www.slate.com/id/2104988/ - 2004 article where Costco=Kerry, Walmart=Bush
http://www.slate.com/id/2194332/ - More comparisons from Slate
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.