Consumers Care Where Their Meat Comes From, and Suppliers Are Taking Their Research Seriously

Some butchers, market owners and meat-buying collectives are increasingly serious about knowing where the meat they sell comes from and how the animals were raised.

Rosemary oil can be used as a natural meat preservative, and it works better than chemical additives

Although some people already use the popular herb rosemary for seasoning their meat, this combination may become more common in the near future as food manufacturers respond to consumer demand for more natural products. Currently, two of the most common additives…

Deadly chemical accident at Tyson chicken processing plant lands 173 workers in hospital

(NaturalNews) The accidental mixing of two unidentified chemicals at a Tyson chicken processing plant in Springdale, Ark., has landed 173 of its roughly 300 workers in the hospital, according to reports. The two chemicals, which Tyson refused to identify, somehow got mixed together to produce deadly chlorine gas, which sent five of the workers to intensive care, with another 50 remaining hospitalized days after it occurred. Donnie King, senior vice president of poultry and prepared foods at Tyson, said that human error was partially responsible for the mixing of the chemicals, but did not provide further details. Gary Mickelson, a company spokesman, added that the plant does not actually use chlorine gas as part of its processing regimen, despite the fact that chlorine itself is commonly used as an antimicrobial treatment for factory chicken. The whole incident is the type of scenario you might expect to occur at some kind of chemical or other industrial factory, not a food processing plant. And yet millions of people consume Tyson chicken, which apparently is processed with the help of some sort of chemical concoction that, when mixed, creates a gas that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says can cause respiratory illness and sudden death. Last year, the country of Russia actually banned poultry product imports from the US because many chicken processors use chlorine to sanitize their chicken. Russian safety standards are apparently much higher than they are in the US, and the country basically announced to the world that it does not approve of chicken that is dunked in chlorine baths prior to being consumed by humans (http://www.naturalnews.com/028363_chicken_chlorine.html). The New York Times also reported last year that much of the factory beef consumed in the US is injected with ammonia during processing, a chemical that is also used in most glass cleaners. By treating the meat this way, officials claim deadly bacteria like E. coli will be killed, and the meat rendered safe to eat (http://www.naturalnews.com/027872_ammonia_beef_products.html). The Tyson chicken plant incident serves as a wake-up call about what is lurking in the industrial food supply that millions of people consume every single day. If food is being subjected to chemicals during processing that, when mixed, are deadly, what does this say about the safety of the final end product? For meat eaters, the only truly safe meat comes from animals raised humanely on organic, pasture-based farms, and that is processed without the use of chemicals like chlorine and ammonia. When it comes to food of any kind these days, knowing its source and how it was grown and processed is crucial to ensuring its safety. Sources for this story include: http://www.foxnews.com/health/2011/06/29/dozens-us-chicken-plant-workers-hospitalized/

US meat and poultry widely contaminated with bacteria including superbugs

(NaturalNews) How would you like a big, juicy burger loaded with onions, mustard, ketchup — and a big helping of drug-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (S. aureus), a bacteria linked to a wide range of human diseases? If you find that dish stomach-churning instead of appetizing, then maybe you should think twice before eating not only meat but chicken and turkey, too, at least in the U.S. According to a nationwide study just released by the Flagstaff, Arizona-based Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen), meat and poultry from U.S. grocery stores have an unexpectedly high rate of dangerous disease-causing bacteria, including antibiotic resistant superbugs. In fact, almost half (47 percent) of all meat and poultry samples tests were contaminated with S. aureus. What’s more, 52 percent of these contaminated meats contained superbugs, meaning the bacteria were resistant to multiple classes of antibiotics.That adds up to multi-antibiotic resistant Staph germs being present in about one out of every 4 samples of meat, chicken or turkey. “For the first time, we know how much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with antibiotic-resistant Staph, and it is substantial,” Lance B. Price, Ph.D., senior author of the study and Director of TGen’s Center for Food Microbiology and Environmental Health, said in a statement to the media. The research, published today in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases , is the first national investigation of antibiotic resistant S. aureus in the U.S. food supply. The scientists collected and analyzed 136 samples of beef, chicken, pork and turkey sold under 80 brands in 26 retail grocery stores in Los Angeles, Chicago, Fort Lauderdale, Flagstaff and Washington, D.C. So where does this downright nauseating contamination come from? The TGen researchers reported that DNA testing shows the food the animals themselves were fed is likely the major source of contamination. “The fact that drug-resistant S. aureus was so prevalent, and likely came from the food animals themselves, is troubling, and demands attention to how antibiotics are used in food-animal production today,” Dr. Price added. The dirty truth many Americans — especially meat eaters — don’t want to face is that conditions on so-called industrial farms are not only often inhumane but downright sickening. Animals raised for slaughter are packed together densely and steadily fed low doses of antibiotics in their food. The new report concludes these industrial farms are the ideal breeding grounds for drug-resistant bacteria that can move from animals to the human population. “The emergence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria — including Staph — remains a major challenge in clinical medicine,” Paul S. Keim, Ph.D., Director of TGen’s Pathogen Genomics Division and Director of the Center for Microbial Genetics and Genomics at Northern Arizona University (NAU), emphasized in a media statement. “This study shows that much of our meat and poultry is contaminated with multidrug-resistant Staph. Now we need to determine what this means in terms of risk to the consumer,” Dr. Keim, a co-author of the paper, added. But doesn’t the U.S. government routinely survey retail meat and poultry for drug-resistant bacteria? The study points out the feds only check for four types of superbugs — but S. aureus is not among them. The paper urges a more comprehensive inspection program and points out S. aureus can cause devastating health problems. While it’s true Staph germs can usually be killed with proper cooking, the scientists pointed out Staph still poses a substantial health risk through improper food handling and cross-contamination in the kitchen. Infections with S. aureus can cause a range of illnesses from minor skin infections to life-threatening diseases, such as pneumonia, endocarditis (inflammation of the heart) and sepsis (infection in the bloodstream). And should you get one of these antibiotic-resistant strains from meat or poultry, treatment can be difficult. “Antibiotics are the most important drugs that we have to treat Staph infections; but when Staph are resistant to three, four, five or even nine different antibiotics –like we saw in this study — that leaves physicians few options,” Dr. Price stated. For more information: http://www.tgen.org/

Taco Bell beef faked? No more than the rest of the FDA-approved toxic food supply

(NaturalNews) The word spread like wildfire across the internet: An Alabama law firm had filed a class action lawsuit against Taco Bell in California, saying its meat fails to meet the definition of beef set forth by the U.S. government (and even that’s a pretty low hurdle, if you ask me). The lawsuit claims Taco Bell’s meat cannot be honestly advertised as “beef” because it claims tests showed the meat was only 35% beef, not the 70% beef required by federal standards. “It’s mainly soy and oats, and there’s lots of other stuff in there that I don’t even know how to pronounce,” said attorney Dee Miles. Taco Bell responded quickly, saying their meat was “88% beef” and that they buy the same brand of beef sold in supermarkets — Tyson Foods. Oh well, that clears it all up, then. Tyson Foods. And what’s the other 12%? According to Taco Bell, it’s water, spices, oats, starch and “other ingredients” that the restaurant says contribute to the “quality” of its beef. Apparently, Taco Bell believes the way to enhance the quality of beef is to throw in things that are not beef. So what else might be found in that “other ingredients” category? A quick look at Taco Bell’s own website reveals the restaurant uses all the following ingredients in its various menu offerings: • Autolyzed Yeast Extract (which contains MSG, an excitotoxin) • Red #40, Blue #1, Yellow #6 artificial colors • Corn syrup solids • Partially Hydrogenated Corn Oil • Soy Protein • Propylene Glycol Alginate • Dimethylpolysiloxane (an anti-foaming chemical) Source: http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/ingredientstatement Are you seriously eating at Taco Bell? If you’re eating at Taco Bell, there’s not something wrong with their meat… there’s something wrong with your head. Even if Taco Bell’s beef is 100% beef, it’s still conventional beef from cows that are processed in factory farm operations (rather than open-range grass-fed cows). The soy ingredients used in Taco Bell foods are almost certainly GMO soy in origin. The other chemicals such as dimethylpolysiloxane make their foods sound more like chemical concoctions than real food. Then again, Taco Bell beef is probably no worse than any other fast food restaurant. These junk food chains all exist at the fringes of the very definition of “food” . What they serve is more like PHUD. In fact, in some ways Taco Bell is actually far better than some other popular restaurants. Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), for example, uses monosodium glutamate across a huge percentage of its menu items. And they advertise their fried chicken as “fresh!” (How is it fresh if it’s fried? The claim makes no sense…) Suddenly we care about food quality at Taco Bell? But seriously, the bigger issue here isn’t Taco Bell’s meat ingredients as much as it is Americans’ dietary complacency: If you eat at Taco Bell, you don’t CARE what you’re eating. Why should it matter if it’s meat, or soy, or even recycled rat turds? The very fact that somebody is eating at Taco Bell already establishes they’re not very interested in the purity, origins and nutritional potency of the foods they consume. If a guy walked up to me, for example, and showed me a Taco Bell beef burrito and complained, “Dude, I’m not sure if this is real beef! What do you think is the problem here?” Then I would pause, examine the burrito carefully, then reply, “The problem is… you’re a moron! ” Since when did people ever read the ingredients of the food they buy at Taco Bell anyway? I guess reading ingredients lists is just too complicated these days That’s the glaring contradiction in all this, frankly. Of all these people sounding the alert over Taco Bell’s beef, how many of them ever read the ingredients of the food they buy at Taco Bell in the first place? How many read ingredients at ANY restaurant? How many read the ingredients of the foods they buy at the grocery store? How many consider whether their favorite restaurants are cooking their food on toxic nonstick cookware? The answer is virtually none . Because if mainstream America actually read (and understood) the chemicals going into the foods they buy every single day — like bacon, sausage, canned soups and processed foods — there would be an overnight food revolt that would make Taco Bell’s beef burrito issue seem irrelevant. Because Taco Bell’s ingredient list isn’t any worse than what you find in canned soups at your grocery store right now. And if you really want to find some toxic foods, look into the children’s frozen food section where you’ll find some of the most obnoxious and damaging chemicals of all, including sodium nitrite which causes cancer, and artificial colors which are derived from coal tars. I recently produced and posted a mini-documentary video showing how blueberries are faked in many mainstream food products, including cereals from General Mills and Kellogg’s. You can watch that video at www.FoodInvestigations.com Nobody seemed to go berserk over that. Fake blueberries are acceptable to mainstream consumers, it seems. But fake beef? Oh, now that’s messin’ with the food supply! Eat up, America! The beef in your burrito is no more fake than the idea that the FDA-approved processed dead food supply is somehow good for your health. By the way, you’re also paying for your fake food using fake money being counterfeited by the Federal Reserve faster than you can say, “genetically modified soybean filler material.”

Eating well-done meat doubles your risk of developing bladder cancer

(NaturalNews) You may want to think twice about cooking that meat well-done, according to a new study out of the University of Texas. Researchers there have found that charring meat by frying, barbecuing or otherwise heavily cooking it can lead to the formation of cancer-causing chemicals in the meat. The study explains that people who eat well-done meat double their risk of developing bladder cancer when compared to people who eat meat on the rarer end of the spectrum. This is due primarily to the heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that form when meat is cooked at very high heat. Researchers found that three different HCA chemicals form during high-heat cooking that, collectively, raise a person’s cancer risk by more than 250 percent. And in people who are genetically predisposed to developing the disease from the meat, the risk jumps nearly 500 percent. The U.S. National Cancer Institute has identified a total of 17 different HCAs that contribute to causing cancer, and prior research has already established that these char-induced chemicals increase pancreatic cancer risk. But now it appears that they contribute to bladder cancer as well. The study sheds further light on the direct correlation between the foods we eat and our overall level of health. “This research reinforces the relationship between diet and cancer,” explained Professor Xifeng Wu, lead author of the study, to the American Association for Cancer Research. The study team made very clear in its report that meat itself is not necessarily the culprit in increasing cancer risk, but rather the intense cooking methods by which it is prepared. And it is not just charred red meat – chicken, pork and even fish cooked heavily may also form cancer-causing HCAs. Researchers did point out, however, that eating red and processed meat can increase one’s risk of developing bowel cancer. But no distinction was made between grass-fed and grain-fed meat and whether or not animal husbandry methods play a role in the health factors of meat, so it is best to investigate this matter for yourself. According to the U.K. Food Standards Agency, keeping meat away from direct flames when barbecuing or grilling it will help to reduce the development of HCAs and lower one’s risk of developing cancer. Slow-cooking meat is another way to inhibit HCS formation. Sources for this story include: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8629358.stm

Get More From Your Exercise – Eat Meat

You may not realise this but eating meat can help you get more from exercise – I kid you not. This is because it is such a great source of protein and your body is going to need this in order to build muscle. Meat really is a great food for those who want to [...]