Yum!
by tristero
In case you haven’t heard, factory-produced eggs – of the kind that led to the recent recall of half a billion of them – are not only tasteless, they are produced under horrifying, gross, disgusting conditions. What does “horrifying, gross, disgusting conditions” mean?
Chicken manure located in the manure pits below the egg laying operation was observed to be approximately 4 feet high to 8 feet high at the following locations: Layer 1 – House 1; Layer 3 – Houses 2, 7, 17, and 18. The outside access doors to the manure pits at these locations had been pushed out by the weight of the manure, leaving open access to wildlife or domesticated animals.
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Un-baited, unsealed holes appearing to be rodent burrows located along the second floor baseboards were observed inside Layer 1 – Houses 1 – 9 and 11 – 13; Layer 2 – Houses 7 and 11; Layer 3 – Houses 1, 3, 4, 5, and 6; Layer 4 – House 3.
Dark liquid which appeared to be manure was observed seeping through the concrete foundation to the outside of the laying houses at the following locations: Layer 1 – Houses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 11, 12, and 14; and Layer 3 – Houses 1, 8, 13 and 17.
Standing water approximately 3 inches deep was observed in the southeast corner of the manure pit located inside Layer 1 – House 13.
Employees workng within the houses did not wear or change protective clothing wben moving from house to house. An employee at Layer 6 – House 3 was observed walking out of House 3 with a metal scraper and into House 2 without changing protective clothing and without cleaning/sanitizing equipment between the houses.
Un-caged birds (chickens having escaped) were observed in the egg laying operation in contact with the egg lay;ng birds at Layer 3 – Houses 9 and 16. The un~caged birds were using the manure, which was approximately 8 feet high, to access the egg laying area.
On NPR a few days ago, I heard a professor claim that after he read the reports (available here), he found very little out of the ordinary about the conditions at Hillandale and Wright County Egg. No doubt this is true and I suppose I should feel reassured that 8 foot high stacks of chicken shit are simply business as usual. But I’ll just continue to buy organic eggs or better yet, local eggs from the Greenmarket. If that means I can’t afford to eat eggs every day, that’s ok. Besides, I certainly can’t afford salmonella poisoning.
And if those are the factory conditions for eggs, imagine what it looks like at beef factories, such as Cargill’s:
For the first time in this country, public health officials have linked ground beef to illnesses from a rare strain of E. coli, adding fuel to an already fierce debate over expanding federal rules meant to keep the toxic bacteria out of the meat supply.
Cargill Meat Solutions recalled 8,500 pounds of hamburger on Saturday after investigators determined that it was the likely source of a bacterial strain known as E. coli O26, which had sickened three people in Maine and New York.
Under federal rules, it is illegal to sell ground beef containing a more common strain of the bacteria, E. coli O157:H7, which has been responsible for thousands of illnesses, many deaths and the recall of millions of pounds of beef over the years. But federal regulators are now considering whether to give the same illegal status to at least six other E. coli strains, including O26, which can also make people violently sick.
The meat industry has opposed such a change, saying it is not needed. Among the arguments the industry has used was one stubborn fact: no outbreak in this country from the rarer strains of E. coli had ever been definitively tied to ground beef.
The industry can no longer make that argument.
Hyvää ruokahalua!