Beef Recall, This Little Cow Went to Market, Because It Was Shoved There

Careful, this post might make you sick.

Sunday marked the largest beef recall in this country's history. The U.S. Department of Agriculture dinked 143 million pounds of former moo-moo from Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. in Southern California, dating back to Feb. 1, 2006.

Problem is, some of it might already be in your kid's school lunch or in your burger wrapper. Which means it's already in bellies.

Even if you don't love or even know a child currently enrolled in school or an elderly person receiving meals from a federal nutrition program, you should still care. It's still your tax dollar.

Don't worry. The beef isn't tainted, or so USDA says. It's just mistreated. Whew!

An undercover video exposed Westland/Hallmark for poor treatment of its animals and lax safety inspections. The crux is how "downer" animals -- those too sick to walk on their own power to the slaughterhouse -- are treated: shoved with a forklift or dragged with a chain.

To market, to market!

"Federal regulations call for keeping downed cattle out of the food supply because they may pose a higher risk of contamination from E. coli, salmonella or mad cow disease since they typically wallow in feces and their immune systems are often weak." (Associated Press, 2/17/08)

Do you want to eat something that can't get up out of its own crap?

I am not a vegetarian. I eat beef raised on a family farm, tended gently and lovingly by a good ol' boy who can walk among his livestock like some sort of whisperer. Partake of a patty at my house, and you will taste the difference between what comes out of my freezer and what comes out of temperature-controlled containers shipped from industrial slaughterhouses supplied by giant feed lots.

Some say it's what you can't taste -- hormones, feed made from animal parts, slop not even fit for pigs. I say it's a spoonful of love and a bucketful of environmental ethics, but whatever. I have plenty, go ahead and take seconds.

This is a "Fast Food Nation" [book, film] kind of thing, but don't let that scare you. I find it highly ironic that giving a sh** about whether meat is tainted with sh** is passed off as some liberal, hippie, Chicken Little call to arms. You are what you eat, and if you want to be a conservative, well duh -- eat CONSERVATIVELY.

Eat in a way in which you eschew entitlement that you must have any cut of beef any time anywhere. Eat in a way in which you fill your own freezer with locally raised meat and produce and conserve it throughout the year until the next slaughter time or harvest. Wow, it's an "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" kind of thing, too. Doesn't that sound yummy?

The Westland/Hallmark recall is raising concerns about how well USDA inspects slaughterhouses, as well as whipping up animal rights activists into a renewed frenzy. Yet the debate might be meaningless. Mass producing anything is inherently difficult to regulate and inspect because the goal is to supply, not to serve. Trying to improve mass food production is like putting a Band-aid on a cough.

OK, work with me here. People need to eat. Not everyone can make their own food, so they do what they can (build a house, teach a class, bitch on a blog) to earn money to buy food. Other folks who can produce food sell that to earn money to buy the things the eaters make. Viola, belly-filling barter.

Here's where we go awry: Even when you're already living in your house, you've forgotten most of what you learned in college and you're stealing a wi-fi hookup from some neighbor (i.e., your needs are met), why stop making food? Keep selling it! Keep convincing these eaters that they need to keep consuming! Make a little more food, make a little more money. This is about inflating a demand for something you can supply. This is NOT about serving humanity's need to eat. You can't improve something that is the problem itself.

If my pinko rant doesn't convince you, then watch the whole Humane Society video. It does contain graphic images, but you shouldn't shy away from anything more disgusting than what happens inside your own belly when you digest this stuff.

Now, here's some virtual Pepto-Bismol. How about we work together to compile a list of food makers and shakers in northwest Ohio whose offerings we would be happy to gobble up? I have to walk a careful line in promoting businesses, but I'm willing to get a formal reprimand in my file for this. This is life and death stuff.

Go ahead and leave a comment on this post or e-mail me your thoughts and suggestions. Maybe we can actually get together with an extension office or another advocacy group in the area and get a real, certified list going.

Comments

[Joy]

If we start a list then I say list the prices too. We're not all progeny of farmers who can get such great products free or at a discount, not to mention we're in a recession.

I'm all for eating ethically, but my checkbook also limits me to what I can buy. And let's face it, organic, not-abused, free range whatever costs more than mass produced. That particularly says a lot when you're living on a fixed income or food stamps.

Even "fresh" fruits and veggies (if you can even find them fresh here in Findlay), aren't cheap, especially those with labels claiming they're free of pesticides and whatnot.

Eating responsibly is all well and good, but until we get to the point where the average American consumer can actually afford meat from cows raised lovingly by independent farmers, the culture of mass production, and all its negatives, will continue to flourish.

[Rebecca]

Joy raises important points. Buying the kind of food we're talking about here can seem more expensive on a sales slip. "Organic" or "green" labels in stores sometimes are little more than marketing schemes of their own, and often these products come from the exact same folks who are selling the "cheaper" mass-produced stuff too.

Besides, we think it's "cheap," but we are paying for fuel and packaging and all kinds of non-edible stuff in our "food."

There's so much to be said about the "cost" of eating ethically that I would like to tackle that in a separate post.

The bottom line, though, is balancing a check book means balancing an ethical food budget against all of our purchases. Promoting healthy and responsible food production actually reduces the cycles of poverty in which folks are using food stamps in the first place.

We have to start somewhere.

(Btw, I pay for my meat, whether it comes from my dad or the other good ol' boys I know, like the one to whom I'm referring in this post.)

[Chris]

I've been tossing around ideas of having a "community" type garden at TisaWee. I have room for several large plots, and plenty of room for chickens or a pig or two. I just can't figure out how to work it out. It drives me crazy to have a couple acres sitting there -- no chemicals on it for at least 3 years now -- that I don't use for anything and just keep mowed down a couple times a year. If you, or anyone else, has ideas about starting a community garden based on organic principles, please pass them along!

[Josh Woodward]

I'd love to know good local sources for humane/organic/etc foods. I know about Dickman and Luginbill Farms, but haven't had much luck tracking them down aside from the Farmers' Market (and then, only frozen).

[Joy]

I look forward to the food vs. cost discussion and/or smackdown!

I'd love nothing better than to be able to forsake apartment life and have my own garden, or to even share one cooperatively on a lovely piece of land in the country. But gee, then you have to factor in high gas prices and the use of fossil fuels, which would then defeat the purpose of sustainable living in the first place, wouldn't it?

And we supposedly have all these nice farms here in the heartland of America, Hancock and surrounding counties in particular, that supposedly raise these nice products, but where can Joe Schmo purchase them other than as ingredients in pricey restaurant dishes?

I find it all kind of overwhelming and quite contradictory.

[Megan]

OK, I live in Virginia, and I guess this post means Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) hasn't come to Ohio yet. We actually buy our grass-fed beef at Wegman's, and the price is reasonable, but it's definitely more expensive than the standard-issue stuff. We don't bother with organic fruits and veggies, but for beef and chicken, it is worth the price to us. We also don't eat meat every night, so the total expense isn't as great.

[Amanda B.]

I buy our meat at Tank's in Elmore. It's a small butcher/meat shop that I have no details on. What I know is it tastes 50 times better than anything I buy at Meijers. I doubt it has all the hormones, etc. that other meat has, but I can't prove it.

I forget specific prices, but for $65 I bought a huge chuck roast, 1 lb italian sausage, 4 large western ribs, 4 lbs of steak (Tbone and porterhouse), and a few pounds of bratwurst. The look on my husband's face when I tell him I'm making meat from Tanks for dinner... priceless =)

[Kendra]

Here is a link for the Northwest Ohio Fresh Network http://www.eisc.org/farm2chef/freshsheet/fsheet-prod.php There's a great list of definitions for terms used in the industry, and what they really mean. And a list of farms in this area.

I believe the most effective and healthiest way to make a positive lasting change is to start small. Can I switch my family's ENTIRE diet to organic TODAY? No. I can make one meal a week organic. I can forgo one purchase of fast food or ice cream etc. to fund the price difference for the meat of one meal to be organic. I use a refillable water bottle instead of buying new ones. There are so many small things you can do that 1)make a huge difference when millions of people do them and 2)immediately make you feel like a successful part of the solution.

[Rebecca]

Hopefully this will turn into a Courier project and news story in the near future. Stay tuned!