The Natural Habitat of E. coli is the Lower Intestine
JL Wall June 29th, 2009
by JL Wall
E. coli outbreak requires a beef supplier to recall 420,000 pounds of its product. (Again.) Anyone surprised? And then we get this:
The recall underscores the need for “a comprehensive animal identification system” that would allow meat suppliers to trace their products to an individual ranch, she said.
No, it underscores the need to keep the shit out of our meat supply – which would require actually doing something about the vile germ-farms that are our nation’s industrial feedlots and slaughterhouses.
Filed under: agriculture, food
AMEN!
Getting the illegal aliens in our meat packing industry to wash their hands once in a while, would help to.
Yeah, somehow I suspect that it’s the cows that are to blame, not them.
Well played.
The Food Inc. documentary has a good section that suggests E. coli outbreaks would be reduced if we had more grass-fed cattle. Apparently grass-fed animals have greater resistance.
John, There weren’t as many outbreaks when Americans making decent wages maned the lines in these meat packing plants. Pardon me if I misunderstood. I naturally assumed as this is a conservative site, and you care about what Americans eat, you’d be concerned with the welfare of Americans themselves.
Yes, but those were also times when animals were raised in conditions much less horrendous than those that currently predominate – my point was just that, at least as I understand things, the relevant strands of E. coli issue from the animals themselves, and the cleanliness of the workers’ hands isn’t likely to be much of a factor in spreading it.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have thrown the illegal alien issue into the soup (pardon the pun) thus diverting from your point. But I do think that bringing third world people from say, Somali to work in such places is a hazard.
Of course you’re right that E.coli is an intestinal bacteria. I’ve never butchered a steer but I’ve butchered deer, wild boar and small game. My belief is that the whole alimentary canal of the slaughtered beeves are removed while the animal is hanging, shortly after the animal has been rendered dead. So E.coli from the gut shouldn’t be showing up in later operations like quartering and boning. That’s why I think sloppy practices are involved. Don’t quote me but I think the workers are supposed to wear disposable gloves on the job as well. So these plants need to be inspected better.
VDARE has done some good reporting on the prevalence of illegals in the meat packing industry and they usually involve brutal and unsanitary practices as well.
I’m not knowledgeable about cattle rearing and E.coli. My casual observation of such cattle as I’ve seen, is that even cattle raised as pets will roll around in the their own dung and that other cattle. So maybe what we need are smaller, cleaner, better inspected meat processing plants. The meat will be more expensive but safer.
I basically agree with this, but in practice the problem is that “smaller” and “better inspected” have trouble going together, as inspection regimes and other regulatory burdens are much better handled by larger producers.