Cleaning Products, yes Cleaning Products
As antibiotics are no longer doing the job, meat producers
are getting spooky creative. They are trying radiation, gasses, nitrites and
even sprays made of viruses
called bacteriophages to quell
the germfest. Still, nothing has caused such reflexive revulsion as the news
last year that meat scraps once earmarked
for pet food were being
resurrected as "lean finely textured beef" (LFTB) also
called Pink Slime. While the product looked like human intestines, what really
turned the national stomach was that it was treated with puffs of ammonia to kill the bacterium E. coli. The public was also outraged that the pink slime was
supplying the National School Lunch Program. Its main producer, Beef Products,
Inc., announced it was
closing its production facilities, soon after the hoopla began. But there
is another cleaning product used in meat production that is starting to make
news: chlorine. According to the website MeatPoultry.com, "99 percent of American
poultry processors" cool their "birds by immersion in chlorinated water-chiller
baths." Who knew? The European Union and Russia are currently
duking it ou t with US trade officials over the chlorine-dipped poultry that
few Americans realize they are eating.
Hormones
There is another product Americans eat every day that the
European Union doesn't want: beef. The European Commission's
Scientific Committee on Veterinary Measures says the US's
hormone-heavy beef production poses "increased risks of breast cancer and
prostate cancer," citing
cancer rates in countries that do and don't eat US beef. Like the "fine
print" in lean finely textured beef,
Americans are blissfully unaware of the synthetic hormones zeranol,
trenbolone acetate and melengestrol acetate that are part of the recipe for
production of US beef. Melengestrol acetate, which is not
withdrawn in the days before slaughter, is
30 times more active than natural progesterone says the European Commission. The powerful estrogenic chemical,
Zeranol, is associated with early
puberty and breast cancers charges the Breast Cancer Fund, a group
dedicated to identifying and eliminating the "environmental causes"
of cancer. "Consumption of beef derived from Zeranol-implanted cattle may
be a risk factor for breast cancer," agrees a recent article in the
journal Anticancer
Research . And
trenbolone acetate, a synthetic androgen?
It is on scientists' radar because it masculinizes fish. Too
bad USDA is not as cautious as the European Commission.
Mad Cow Disease
Many people have forgotten about Mad Cow Disease but the
risks are far from gone, especially because the government has obfuscated. In
its final report about the first US mad cow, found in December 2003, the government
said "all potentially-infectious product" from the deadly cow
"was disposed of in a landfill in accordance with Federal, State and local
regulations." But the San
Francisco Chronicle reported that 11
restaurants received the meat. Big difference. The sources of the Mad Cow
Disease seen in a second and third cow were
never found but the government protected the identities of the Texas and
Alabama ranches and let them sell
beef again within a month. Mad Cow and related diseases like Chronic
Wasting Disease in deer are transmitted by prions which are "rogue
proteins" that are not destroyed by cooking, heat, autoclaves, ammonia,
bleach, hydrogen peroxide, alcohol, phenol, lye, formaldehyde, or radiation,
and they remain in the soil, contaminating it for years. Because Mad Cow
Disease could destroy the US beef industry, officials are quick to dismiss
possible human cases. When suspicious cases arise, officials call them
"spontaneous" illnesses, not from eating bad meat--even before tests
are in.
Asthma-Like
Drugs
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