WHERE's THE BEEF??

[Chayil_Ishshah]

From Mother Earth News:

[quote]
You can’t see it. And you can’t always recognize it by reading the label. But the beef in your supermarket has gone industrial.

Before factory farming took hold in the 1960s, cattle were raised on family farms or ranches around the country. The process was elemental. Young calves were born in the spring and spent their first months suckling milk and grazing on grass. When they were weaned, they were turned out onto pastures. Some cattle were given a moderate amount of grain to enhance marbling (the fat interlaced in the muscle). The calves grew to maturity at a natural pace, reaching market weight at two to three years of age. After the animals were slaughtered, the carcasses were kept cool for a couple weeks to enhance flavor and tenderness, a traditional process called dry aging. The meat was then shipped in large cuts to meat markets. The local butcher divided it into individual cuts upon request and wrapped it in white paper and string.

This meat was free of antibiotics, added hormones, feed additives, flavor enhancers, age-delaying gases and salt-water solutions. Mad cow disease and the deadliest strain of E. coli — 0157:H7 — did not exist. People dined on rare steaks and steak tartare (raw ground beef) with little fear.
What’s in Your Beef?

Today’s industrialized process brings cattle to slaughter weight in just one or two years. But it reduces the nutritional value of the meat, stresses the animals, increases the risk of bacterial contamination, pollutes the environment and exposes consumers to a long list of unwanted chemicals.

The beef contains traces of hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals that were never produced by any cow. That hamburger looks fresh, but it may be two weeks old and injected with gases to keep it cherry red. Take a closer look at that “guaranteed tender and juicyâ€

[Chayil_Ishshah]

[quote]
Processed is the New “FRESHâ€

[Chayil_Ishshah]

[quote]
So You Want Better Beef?

Finding an alternative to industrial beef takes effort. The cattle industry is highly consolidated, with the largest 25 feedlot companies now supplying 40 percent of all U.S. beef. The packing industry is even more concentrated. The top four beef packers (IBP/Tyson, Excel/Cargill, Swift/ConAgra and U.S. Premium/National Beef) harvest more than 80 percent of the meat. By contrast, in the 1960s the top four packers slaughtered less than 30 percent of all cattle. The trend is likely to continue, partly due to the fact that food giants, such as Wal-Mart and Safeway, cut costs by reducing their number of suppliers. Except for a small section of the meat case devoted to “natural meats,â€

[Chayil_Ishshah]

Looks like he got caught:

[quote] Associated Press
After graphic video, admits sick cows slaughtered for sale
Associated Press

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WASHINGTON – The head of the Southern California slaughterhouse that produced 143 million pounds of recalled beef acknowledged Wednesday that cows too sick to stand at his plant were apparently forced into the nation’s food supply in violation of federal rules.

Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. President Steve Mendell made the admission after a congressional panel forced him to watch gruesome undercover video of abuses at his slaughterhouse.

Mendell watched red-faced and grim, sometimes resting his head on his hand, as cows were dragged by chains, sprayed in the nostrils with water, shocked and harshly prodded with forklifts to get them into the box where they would be slaughtered.

Afterward Mendell briefly bowed his head, then backed away from claims he’d made in his prepared testimony, delivered under oath, that no ill cows from his plant had entered the food supply.

So-called “downerâ€

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eeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww!



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