Factory Farmed Meat: E Coli Burgers and Chicken Poo

As if yesterday's post wasn't enough now I'm reading confirmation that livestock cows are fed chicken poo. Worse yet, the USDA is allowing E-Coli Tainted Meat to be cooked and resold in the form of pre-cooked meat products. Can anyone say eeeewww?!

ABC News Story
Imagine a ton of freshly ground beef. The company in charge of processing this meat finds out during a routine test that it is contaminated with E. coli. They record the test results, which are read by a government inspector, who acknowledges that the meat is indeed tainted.

Tainted ground beef has killed at least one and sickened more than two dozen. You might think that this beef would be headed straight for the garbage bin. But in many cases, this meat is instead cooked, prepared and packaged as a pre-cooked hamburger patty that you pick up from the grocery store. And it's all completely legal.

Below is more confirmation that feeding animal poo to livestock is a widely accepted practice. Why? Because it's cheaper than the food God designed them to eat and the meat industry is completely in denial about what livestock eat and how it affects your body. All the care about is cheap meat and bigger profit margins.

LA Times Article

'Farmers feed 1 million to 2 million tons of poultry litter to their cattle annually, according to FDA.

estimates...Using the litter -- which includes feces, spilled chicken feed, feathers and poultry farm detritus -- increases the risk of cows becoming infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, said Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union.

That's because the spilled chicken feed and the feces contain tissue from ruminants -- cows and sheep, among other mammals. The disease is transmitted through feeding ruminant remains to cattle.

"It takes a very small quantity of ruminant protein, even just 1 milligram, to cause an infection," said Steve Roach, public health program director with Food Animal Concerns Trust, a Chicago-based animal welfare group that is part of the coalition.

The beef industry claims that this is not an issue? What?????? So they can save money by feeding cows chicken poop contaminated with God knows what?

More Links:

Feces Farming Resource Guide
Though the practice of recycling animal waste can be documented back to the mid 1900's in the United States, its use has escalated dramatically since the turn of this century....some countries like the United States have regulations which define “organic” livestock as animals which cannot be fed feces.

Concerned about Factory Farming?: Vote No on Ohio Issue 2

I've seen commercials on Issue 2 spinning it as 'pro local farmer'...unfortunately, according to the Humane Society, issue 2 is a political move to protect factory farming.

Here's the deal: HSUS (Humane Society of the US) lobbied successfully to pass farm animal rights legislation in California (Proposition 2). Ohio Issue 2 would put the treatment of farm animals under the control of a State Board (dominated by agribusiness) so that the HSUS or similar groups can't come in and introduce similar animal rights legislation.

While designed to give the appearance of helping farm animals, Issue 2 is little more than a power grab by Ohio’s agribusiness lobby. The industry-dominated “animal care” council proposed by Issue 2 is really intended to thwart meaningful improvements in how the millions of farm animals in Ohio are treated on large factory farms.

Because it’s designed to favor large factory farms, not family farmers, Issue 2 is opposed by the Ohio Farmers Union, the Ohio Environmental Stewardship Alliance, League of Women Voters of Ohio, the Ohio League of Humane Voters, and the Ohio Sierra Club. The editorial boards of Ohio’s major newspapers—including the Columbus Dispatch, Cleveland Plain Dealer, and Dayton Daily News—all oppose this effort to enshrine the agribusiness lobby’s favored oversight system in the state’s constitution.

Issue 2 is a classic example of bad public policy-making and should be rejected by voters.

More here....

According to the article, issue 2 is a response by big agribusiness to protect itself against the type of animal rights legislation created recently in California...

Ohio is one of the top veal production states in the nation, with many calves chained by their necks inside crates so small they can’t even turn around for months on end. As well, the state has 170,000 breeding pigs, many of whom are confined in two-foot-wide crates barely larger than their bodies for almost their entire lives. And 28 million egg-laying hens in Ohio are confined in barren, wire battery cages so restrictive the birds can't even spread their wings. This type of extreme confinement is cruel and inhumane, environmentally damaging, and poses severe public health threats. These problems have prompted six U.S. states—and the entire European Union—to criminalize certain kinds of extreme confinement of farm animals.


In the wake of California’s overwhelming passage of the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act—which banned veal crates, gestation crates and battery cages in California—The Humane Society of the United States sought to engage in cooperative dialogue with the agribusiness community in Ohio. We hoped to be able to continue that dialogue and work cooperatively with the state’s farming leaders—both large and small—to collaboratively advance animal welfare statewide. But rather than discussing potential solutions to these problems, the Ohio Farm Bureau is now trying to hastily grab more power than it already has. The lobby group persuaded the legislature to refer a measure to the November 2009 ballot that would enshrine in the state’s constitution an industry-dominated council to “oversee” the treatment of farm animals. Unfortunately, this council is likely to do little to advance farm animal welfare. It is little more than a handout to Big Agribusiness interests in the state, seeking to codify the abusive practices currently being used in the state constitution.

More Links:
Animal Blawg: Issue 2 Animal Rights Perspective
Great Article by OSU Professor on Impact of Issue 2 on Farmers
This is a more neutral analysis of Issue 2. He notes that if Issue 2 is passed, the Board will adopt existing animal care standards, many of which animal rights activists consider cruel and inhumane. California Proposition 2 type Animal Rights Reform would be more difficult to initiate. However, if it passed, it would pose a financial challenge to farmers. The farmers would then either eat the cost and change, stop raising livestock that was regulated or leave Ohio in search of another state that wasn't regulated. Very good article for those interested in doing more research.