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General News    H3'ed 9/28/13

We're Eating What? 9 Contaminants in US Meat

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Recently the US Department of Agriculture announced plans to "relax" federal meat and poultry inspections, allowing meat processors greater leeway in policing themselves, already the agricultural trend. But most food activists ask how standards could be relaxed any further when drug residues, heavy metals, cleaning supplies, gasses, nitrites, hormones and other unwanted guests contaminate the meat supply. They are almost all unlabeled.

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Is seafood safer? Dream on. Mercury-filled tuna is what inspired Fischer Stevens to make the Oscar-winning documentary "The Cove," about the Japanese dolphin-fishing industry when he personally came down with mercury poisoning. The Chicago Tribune , New York Times and Consumer Reports have reported high mercury levels in almost all red lean and fatty tuna tested, in recent years. Aquaculture is so festooned with antibiotics, veterinary drugs and pesticides, it can make factory farming look, well, green. Commercial shrimp production, for example, "begins with urea, superphosphate, and diesel, then progresses to the use of piscicides (fish-killing chemicals like chlorine and rotenone), pesticides and antibiotics (including some that are banned in the US), and ends by treating the shrimp with sodium tripolyphosphate (a suspected neurotoxicant), Borax, and occasionally caustic soda," says a review of Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood on AlterNet.

 

Meat contaminants are not likely to go away because they stem from Big Meat's desire to maximize profits by growing animals faster, squeezing them into small living spaces and keeping meat looking "fresh" on store shelves longer. Here is a list of worst offenders:

 

Antibiotics

 

Most people know that antibiotics are part of the diet of US livestock to make them grow faster (feed is metabolized more efficiently) and prevent disease outbreaks in cramped conditions. But they'd   be surprised at how many animals destined for the dinner table have drug residues that exceed legal limits. Each week the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) finds dangerous antibiotic levels in animals which include penicillin, neomycin and "sulfa" and "cipro" drugs, many from "repeat violators." Excessive levels are also found of risky antibiotics like tilmicosin, whose label tells the farmer, "Not for human use. Injection of this drug in humans has been associated with fatalities,"   (nice!) and gentamicin, which the FDA, American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) and Association of Bovine Practitioners warn against using at all, except under rare circumstances.   Unlike bacteria which antibiotics are supposed to kill, "No amount of cooking will destroy [drug] residues" says a USDA Office of the Inspector General report.

 

Bacteria

 

You'd think with the antibiotic party going on, meat would be free of bacteria. You'd be wrong. Bacteria are rife in conventionally grown US meat including antibiotic-resistant bacteria also known as superbugs. Almost half of beef, chicken, pork and turkey in   samples tested from US grocery stores contained staph bacteria reported the Los Angeles Times in 2011--including the resistant MRSA staph bacterium (methicillin-resistant S. aureus). Pork tested by Consumer Reports in 2013 also contained MRSA and four other kinds of resistant bacteria. Two serious strains of antibiotic resistant salmonella, called Salmonella Heidelberg and Salmonella Hadar, forced recent recalls   of turkey products from Jennie-O Turkey and Cargill and chicken products from Schreiber Processing Corporation. The resistant salmonella strains were so deadly, officials warned that disposed meat should be in sealed garbage cans to protect wild animals. Yes, even wildlife is threatened by the factory farm-created scourges. MRSA is no longer limited to health care settings, either.   Researchers have found it on Florida public beaches and on the top of unopened soft drink can in a car that was following a poultry truck.

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Martha Rosenberg is an award-winning investigative public health reporter who covers the food, drug and gun industries. Her first book, Born With A Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp The Public Health, is distributed by Random (more...)
 

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