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"After the birds' heads are pulled off and their feet removed, machines open them with a vertical incision and remove their guts. Contamination often occurs here, as the high-speed machines commonly rip open intestines, releasing feces into the birds' body cavities.
Once upon a time, US Department of Agriculture (Usda) inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about 30 years ago, the poultry industry convinced the Usda to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a "cosmetic blemish".
Journalist Scott Bronstein conducted interviews with nearly 100 Usda poultry inspectors from 37 plants. "Every week," he reports, "millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumours or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers."
Next, the chickens go to a massive refrigerated tank of water, where thousands of birds are communally cooled. The Government Accountability Project, a US whistleblower protection organisation, has said that the "water in these tanks has been aptly named 'fecal soup' for all the filth and bacteria floating around".
Air-chilling reduces the weight of a bird's carcass, but water-chilling causes a dead bird to soak up water (the "fecal soup"). One study has shown that simply placing the chicken carcasses in sealed plastic bags during the chilling stage would eliminate cross-contamination. But that would also eliminate an opportunity to turn waste-water into tens of millions of dollars' worth of additional weight in poultry products.
Each case of food-borne illness cannot be traced, but where we do know the original, or the "vehicle of transmission," it is, overwhelmingly, an animal product.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), poultry is by far the largest cause... 83 percent of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase...
The next time a friend has... "the stomach flu" - ask a few questions... he or she was probably among the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the CDC estimates occur in America each year.”
"After the birds' heads are pulled off and their feet removed, machines open them with a vertical incision and remove their guts. Contamination often occurs here, as the high-speed machines commonly rip open intestines, releasing feces into the birds' body cavities.
Once upon a time, US Department of Agriculture (Usda) inspectors had to condemn any bird with such fecal contamination. But about 30 years ago, the poultry industry convinced the Usda to reclassify feces so that it could continue to use these automatic eviscerators. Once a dangerous contaminant, feces are now classified as a "cosmetic blemish".
Journalist Scott Bronstein conducted interviews with nearly 100 Usda poultry inspectors from 37 plants. "Every week," he reports, "millions of chickens leaking yellow pus, stained by green feces, contaminated by harmful bacteria, or marred by lung and heart infections, cancerous tumours or skin conditions are shipped for sale to consumers."
Next, the chickens go to a massive refrigerated tank of water, where thousands of birds are communally cooled. The Government Accountability Project, a US whistleblower protection organisation, has said that the "water in these tanks has been aptly named 'fecal soup' for all the filth and bacteria floating around".
Air-chilling reduces the weight of a bird's carcass, but water-chilling causes a dead bird to soak up water (the "fecal soup"). One study has shown that simply placing the chicken carcasses in sealed plastic bags during the chilling stage would eliminate cross-contamination. But that would also eliminate an opportunity to turn waste-water into tens of millions of dollars' worth of additional weight in poultry products.
Each case of food-borne illness cannot be traced, but where we do know the original, or the "vehicle of transmission," it is, overwhelmingly, an animal product.
According to the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC), poultry is by far the largest cause... 83 percent of all chicken meat (including organic and antibiotic-free brands) is infected with either campylobacter or salmonella at the time of purchase...
The next time a friend has... "the stomach flu" - ask a few questions... he or she was probably among the 76 million cases of food-borne illness the CDC estimates occur in America each year.”
I buy 99% of all my chicken and beef from a local farmer/rancher. Call him on Monday each week, tell him how much I need, and pick it up on Sat. No pink slime (although w/ the backlash most plants are now shut down) and now chicken worries.
But agreed...this story is really only the tip of the iceberg.
I love chicken, I buy all of mine from a local farmer who sells free range, full natural chickens processed by hand.
'Free range' doesn't mean much, at least according the USDA requirements.
FREE-RANGE
Here’s the USDA’s definition of the labels “free range” or “free roaming” for poultry products:
Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.
So basically, if hens are packed by the thousands into a dark warehouse (a common scenario), and there’s a tiny door at one end — a door that they may never have passed through — the eggs qualify for the misleading label.
Same with cage-free, which means, simply, no cages. “One can reliably assume that most ‘free-range’ (or ‘cage-free’) laying hens are debeaked, drugged, and cruelly slaughtered once they are ‘spent’,” notes Jonathan Safran Foer in his bestselling Eating Animals. “I could keep a flock of hens under my sink and call them free-range.”
'Free range' doesn't mean much, at least according the USDA requirements.
FREE-RANGE
Here’s the USDA’s definition of the labels “free range” or “free roaming” for poultry products:
Producers must demonstrate to the Agency that the poultry has been allowed access to the outside.
So basically, if hens are packed by the thousands into a dark warehouse (a common scenario), and there’s a tiny door at one end — a door that they may never have passed through — the eggs qualify for the misleading label.
Same with cage-free, which means, simply, no cages. “One can reliably assume that most ‘free-range’ (or ‘cage-free’) laying hens are debeaked, drugged, and cruelly slaughtered once they are ‘spent’,” notes Jonathan Safran Foer in his bestselling Eating Animals. “I could keep a flock of hens under my sink and call them free-range.”
Thanks a bunch.TMI. Already down to just fish and chicken. Now what?
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