Comments on: Ag Sec Vilsack on the E. coli Crisis

By: Civil Eats » Blog Archive » Food Safety Action: What a Difference Investigative Reporting Makes

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 15:42:23 +0000

[...] of Agriculture Tom Vilsack responded to the article right away, adding later that the Obama administration was going to ask congress for legislation that would [...]

By: Devora Kimelman-Block

Devora Kimelman-Block — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:26:01 +0000

A major (if not THE major) cause of E.coli is that the cattle are on a grain (corn) based diet. Feedlot grain makes the animals more acidic, which in turn makes the E. coli more acid-resistant so that the acids in our stomachs can’t combat the E.coli bacteria. If you want to have safer meat, you need to eat grassfed meat. I write a blog about this (www.kolfoods.blogspot.com) and started a kosher, grass-fed meat business (www.kolfoods.com).

Here is a study by Cornell University about this very issue:

Russell, J. B., F. Diez-Gonzalez, and G. N. Jarvis. “Potential Effect of Cattle Diets on the Transmission of Pathogenic Escherichia Coli to Humans” Microbes Infect 2, no. 1 (2000): 45-53.

By: sally oakley

sally oakley — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:51:17 +0000

it’s all smoke and mirrors. no matter what they say, it will still be business as usual. i’m curious how this will affect the food safety bill sitting in the senate, waiting for “debate” and mark-up? maybe this is a good thing to come to light at this time.

By: Bill McCann

Bill McCann — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:04:04 +0000

Thanks for your coments on that great Times article. I have been working as a butcher for about thirty-five years. That seems like a long time from a young persons perspective, but to me it seems like a kind of short run. When I started out, every small town had a slaughter facility, and most cities had several. I started in one of those small facilities. We all knew the ranchers who raised the livestock that we processed, and then, as now there was ocasionally some questionable product that we handled. The difference now is one of crazy scale. In 1971 The small crew that I worked with processed about thirty beef and sixty or so hogs in a week. Those numbers are handled in less than an hour in these big plants in the Midwest. Things were not always right back in the day, but the scale was in keeping with responsible consumption of resorces. We have just lost our bearings with this quest for cheap food. The old adage about how we get what we pay for is sure true with this whole mess. Thanks again, but cut our new Ag Sec. a little slack. At least he didn’t go off on a rant about our fabulous industrial food industry. In my day I have seen much worse.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:07:19 +0000

Here’s an idea: how about banning the “medicine” that lowers the pH of beef cattle’s stomachs when they are “finished” on grain that they can’t digest? Grass-fed beef have normal stomach pH, which E. coli generally can’t survive. Lowering their stomach pH makes it more equal with human stomach acid pH, which means that E. coli can survive in our stomachs, too, except it kills us, unlike cows.

Another option? Reforming CAFOs so that E. coli can’t proliferate as easily through the absolutely filthy conditions from the stockyards to the slaughterhouses to the ground beef that killed that young woman.

Of course, Big Beef would complain, so the USDA will continue to make platitudes. Maybe public outcry will force their hand toward more oversight. Maybe.

Here’s hoping.