USDA Meat Testing Plan Will Not Curb Food-Borne Illness—But It Will Curb Local & Organic Meat

This assault on your food choice, made under the guise of food safety, is a demonstration that the underlying mass production paradigm has failed. If you want to maintain your right to health, then you need to send the USDA your opinion.

by Heidi Stevenson

16 April 2011

Food-borne illness has become big news over the last couple of years, and now the USDA is implementing a plan they claim will help stop the problem. The plan is to hold all meat and poultry from shipping to stores until after the hygiene test results are returned. They won't test any more than they did before. They won't test anything but meat and poultry. And they will hold the meat for as long as it takes to receive the results, which are expected to take up to two days. Oh well...who cares about freshness, anyway. (And what's that going to do to the quality of meat?)

Most significantly, it doesn't begin to address the real food-borne illness problems. You know. Like antibiotic resistant diseases. Like mass outbreaks of disease formerly associated only with meat, and now found in foods like spinach and eggs and peanut butter. When you really think about it, this is a lot of fuss for very little benefit. So, what's the real reason?

Why Mass Production Meat Is Full of Pathogens

First, let's take a look at why there's a lot of sick meat being produced. You don't need to look far. Agribusiness is in the business of making money. Raising animals for meat is incidental to that goal. Therefore, anything that increases profits is done, no matter what the results—just as long as the result is profits.

Animals are kept in horrific and crowded circumstances. Many spend their lives standing in their excrement and breathing its fumes. They're fed garbage that isn't natural to them because it fattens them up quicker. They're given constant streams of antibiotics and other drugs for the purpose of making them grow faster and bigger. They spend their lives in the agony of stomach distress. They're sick, but that doesn't matter as long as they can stand up on their way to slaughter, even if it means they must be brutalized to get there.

Sick animals produce sick meat.

Then, these sick animals are butchered in abattoirs where speed is the critical issue. After all, the faster they're cut up, the more profits can be made. Naturally, sloppiness results. Fecal matter and the contents from nicked intestines get mixed into meat.

Mass produced meat is sick meat. Holding meat until testing is complete is not a solution. It's an acknowledgement that the underlying mass production paradigm is a failure.

Most revealing is the fact that the American Meat Institute (AMI) actually requested this action by the USDA. The AMI is an organization of mass producers of beef, pork, and poultry. It does not represent small producers, organic producers, and any others whose focus is on the health and welfare of their charges and products.

Healthy Meat

The only good way to eliminate most pathogens from meat is to raise animals in environments conducive to their health. The simple fact is that healthy meat comes from healthy animals. Organic free range producers are the only reasonably sure means of production. If you want to buy healthy and safe meat, then you must find it outside of the mass retail market. It simply cannot be found in supermarkets, even when labeled as organic or free range. The rules are circumvented in a thousand little ways. "Free range" is redefined so that it sounds good, but the reality is that the animals are treated just as badly. "Organic", as defined by the USDA, is a joke.

If you want healthy meat, then you must find a way to purchase it directly from a farm, whose production methods you know, or a butcher who can tell you where he obtains his meat and how he knows it's of good quality. Of course, such butchers are almost nonexistent in the United States, and they're becoming scarce elsewhere. The only other option is knowing that a good system for prevention of contamination—one that is fully endorsed by the farmers and producers, not simply lip service—exists in the product you purchase. There are local, state-wide and smaller, associations that exist for this purpose.

The Ongoing Assault on Small Meat Producers

If you already have such a source, be prepared to fight for it. The assault on small meat producers is in full swing—and the USDA's plans to stop sales of meat until test results have been returned are part of it.

The Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system put into place by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the USDA does not benefit the public, nor does it benefit producers of genuinely high quality meat products. Here is a message from a small producer to the FSIS explaining why it accomplished nothing positive, and here is a message from a consumer explaining why it eliminates one's ability to choose healthy products. Note: Both of these links include several messages. Reading through them is quite revealing.

Why would large producers choose to ask for more regulation? Normally, that's the last thing they want. However, if it also forces competition out of business, then the attitude changes. At a time when the public is growing more and more interested in taking back control over their health and food, the industries involved are striking back by using the regulating agencies, which they now control, to set up rules and regulations that small producers cannot meet.

One step was the HACCP system that forced testing needed only by the mass producers, not by the small ones. Now, the noose is being tightened ever further with the planned implementation of holding meat until test results are returned. Meat produced to healthy standards doesn't require this testing, and waiting for results will only cause deterioration of the very quality that consumers want.

Make Your Voice Heard!

Make no mistake about it. The USDA is taking yet another step to curb your right to genuinely healthy foods. If you want it to stop, we need a mass protest.

The USDA says you can send comments until 11 July, but to be safe, it might be advisable to get your comments out as soon as possible. In past instances, agencies have suddenly shut down comments early without notice.

They don't make it easy. The announcement doesn't even provide the ID number to reference the document. However, Gaia Health has the info for you:

Alternatively, you can send a letter to: