FDA Beef Recall — 143 Million Tons!
6 CommentsIf you can imagine, this is my third piece on the FDA in a month and none of it is positive. This saddens me deeply. 
First, we had the use of cloned animals for food product, then the safety review of Botox®, which has now been used widely and rampantly for years, now we have the FDA recall of 143 million tons of beef that has been out on the market since February 2006 from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Plant in Chino, California. So unless you have a deep freezer and hoarding food since 2006, and you buy supermarket ground beef, you could have already ingested it. What is so disturbing about this recall is that they were slaughtering non-ambulatory cows, which is against the law and inhumane, hence the Humane Society of the United States got involved, with undercover cameras. (You can see the footage on their site.)
Non-ambulatory animals — usually the first signs of mad cow disease or other neurological disorders — were used for food! These are cows that are too sick to stand and some being fork lifted and electronically prodded to get them into the “kill box.” Kerry Trueman over at Huffington Post, writes an in-depth piece on this topic along with footage, which was almost too disturbing for me to watch — but I did. I don’t consider myself an animal activist, but this my friends might just push me over the edge. And remember, I’m not saying don’t eat meat — I am a yogini who does eat meat in moderation. I’m saying, know where your meat comes from and know that there are safe alternatives to purchasing your meat at stores that sell meat from plants such as Westland.
Namaste,
The most disturbing part of this for me is that most of this meat was distributed to school lunch programs and to lower income families. It is difficult as it is to eat healthy, but even more so for lower income families (thanks McDonald’s) and children are forming eating at this stage of life.
The images are horrific indeed. It makes me wonder why we are still so far behind the rest of the world in the treatment of the animals we eat. Take a look at the UK people!
Although, the FDA does have laws against this,they do not police meat packing plants to inforce the safety rules it set up to protect the public. It is time they set up a more effective enforcement system in the public interest.
Its frightening how safe nutrition and well being are becoming a luxury product in this country. The FDA wont protect us so we need to start requiring our suppliers to be responsible. It is frightening how often in a supermarket or restaurant, I can’t get an answer when I ask the source of their meat or fish.
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