Then you really don't want to know much about the mass food production systems in the US... :yikes:
Salmonella levels of meats like fresh chicken are very high in US and European abbatoir-prepared meats.
Numerous e. coli outbreaks occur every year, and this is a known problem in raw beef.
There are acceptable levels of insect parts and fecal matter allowed in food processing.
Check out:
http://media.www.dailyutahchronicle...You.Like.Fecal.Matter.With.That-2506561.shtml
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16211682/
From some other articles:
ConAgra Foods recalled their Peter Pan Peanut Butter and some batches of Wal-Mart’s Great Value house brand of peanut butter. The reason: salmonella contamination, which probably came from post-processing contact with fecal matter.
And these words and phrases – contact with fecal matter, contamination from manure – are just nice, technical ways of saying that there’s cow crap in our food.
There hasn’t been much outrage in response to the string of food contaminations, and the Food and Drug Administration has cut the number of food safety inspections it conducts in half in the past three years.
“We have a food safety crisis on the horizon,” said Michael Doyle, director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia, in an Associated Press story.
There’s been a lot of progress in making meats safer. Is produce the risk now rather than beef?
A. No. Beef is still a risk. No matter how good and careful you are, when you slaughter over 100 million cows a year, you’re going to have some contamination of the beef. We know that 1 percent of these cows are carrying E. Coli when they’re slaughtered. If people cook [the meat] properly there will never be a risk. But we can’t mandate that it must be cooked thoroughly. If people are going to eat hamburger, there will still be [risk] of food-borne disease. If we irradiated that hamburger at the time of preparation, we can greatly reduce the amount of disease that might occur because of occasional undercooking of it.
From an interview with Dr. Dennis Maki, professor of medicine and epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health
NB: This is why I have stopped feeding raw beef -- e coli could kill a dog, especially a pup.
Report from European Food Safety Authority:
EFSA has published a survey on the levels of Salmonella detected in broiler flocks (chickens reared for meat) across the European Union in 2005-6. Salmonella was estimated to be present in almost 1 in 4 flocks (23.7%) according to the survey which was compiled by EFSA’s Zoonoses Task Force[1] comprising expert representatives from EU Member States, Norway and Switzerland...hicken meat from broilers is linked to many food poisoning cases of Salmonella in Europe. According to national figures provided in EFSA’s 2005 zoonoses report[5], 0 to 18% of fresh (raw) chicken meat samples were contaminated with Salmonella. Salmonella was the second most reported cause of food-borne diseases in humans in Europe
Eighty-three percent of chicken sold in U.S. grocery stores may contain bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses, a consumer group said on Monday, 34 percentage points higher than the rate it found three years ago...Consumer Reports said tests on 525 chickens -- including samples from leading brands Perdue, Pilgrim's Pride Inc. and Tyson Foods Inc. -- showed most of the poultry had campylobacter or salmonella, two of the leading causes of food-borne diseases. A test conducted in 2003 showed 49 percent of the birds had at least one of the bacteria.
The study said the decline in chicken safety was tied largely to a surge in the campylobacter bacteria, which can be carried by birds without them becoming ill, but causes diarrhea in people.
About 81 percent of the chickens tested positive for the pathogen, up from 42 percent in 2003. Halloran said she could not determine what was responsible for the increase.
Salmonella, which causes diarrhea, headache and fever in most people, is one of the most frequently reported causes of food-borne illness in the United States. Consumer Reports estimated 15 percent of the chickens tested had salmonella, up 3 percent from the prior report.
(USDA denied levels were this high):
USDA's Cohen said 11.4 percent of 8,000 broiler samples through September of this year tested positive for salmonella, which if it held for the remainder of the year would be down from 16.3 percent in 2005.
I think generally, it can be very difficult to know where to buy food any longer, anywhere, and food scandals arise regularly everywhere, though I'd definitely rather be buying food where there are at least some attempts to enforce standards. Most places in the developed world have moved away from local suppliers with animals transported sometimes thousands of miles before they are slaughtered in mass-production facilities rather than local butchers.
I actually mostly eat fish from Irish waters these days (the Atlantic side, not the Sellafield side) when I have meat and try to buy mostly organic producef rom local producers -- something my parents started doing when possible four decades ago because my dad (prof of internal medicine) suspected links to rising levels of respiratory disease, asthma and other illness especially in children that mirrored vast increases in chemical additives and pesticide use.
Not always easy though to try and stay away from processed foods! With the dogs, I do like opting as much as I can for home-cooked meals as I know what is going in and know the production process.
