Tag Archives: Meat

It’s summertime and dirty dog is on the menu in Seoul

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The Seoul City Administration has announced that many of the dog meat restaurants in Seoul area were found to contain unhygenic kitchens filled with cockroaches.

From July 15 to 18, 2008 Seoul City has conducted a four-day intensive inspection on the restaurants selling dog meat.

The inspection by the city was done for the first time since 1988 Seoul Summer Olympics when most dog meat restaurants in the capital were forced to close or to move out of the city.

The spokesperson of the Seoul city, however, said that the control over the dog meat restaurant is far from approval of dog meat.

Koreans are known to enjoy dog meats particularly during the sweltering summer days. In Seoul area alone there are some 6,000 restaurants selling dog meat.

Annually 2 million dogs are butchered for the human consumption in South Korea.

How to cook hamburger – more from France

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A correspondent in France has provided a July 2, 2008, document published by the French Ministry of Agriculture regarding meat food safety.

From cooking ”a hamburger to the center” (page 21) to “well-cooked” (page 12), the document is short on specifics, and absolutely wrong when speaking to an audience I particularly care about these days – pregnant women.

“For sensitive consumers (pregnant women, children, the elderly…) eat any meat (beef, poultry, pork) “well done” (that is to say at 65°C = disappearance of pink color), and avoid the consumption of raw meat, of some cold cuts (charcuterie) or tripe product.” (p. 15)

The temperature – 65 C or 149 F – is too low for any ground meat or poultry, and simply does not equal the disappearance of pink.

Color is a lousy indicator of doneness. So is well-cooked, cooked to the center, and, as the Brits prefer, piping hot. Use a tip-sensitive digital thermometer. And stick it in.

Why burn poop on a doorstep when you can cook it in a 7-Eleven microwave

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Three high school students who thought they were being funny by sticking a bag of poop in a Sandy, Utah 7-Eleven microwave and cooking it for 10 minutes have been arrested.

Earlier this week, police released surveillance video of three teens who walked into the convenience store near 2200 East and 9400 South, took out a one-gallon plastic bag with human feces inside and put it into the microwave while the clerk wasn’t looking.

The boys left the store, and the clerk figured out what had happened when a foul stench filled the building. The store had to be closed temporarily because of the odor.

Sandy police Sgt. Victor Quezada said the surveillance video was broadcast by local news stations, investigators received numerous tips from callers, and that on Wednesday morning, five high school students were greeted by police as they arrived for school in the morning. Two of the boys eventually were released, while the other three, two aged 16 and a 17-year-old, were arrested for investigation of third-degree felony criminal mischief.

The 7-Eleven figured out the video surveillance thing, but USDA says it’s too complicated for slaughterhouses.

Don’t Eat Poop

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Douglas Dakin, a high school teacher and soccer coach in Stone Mountain, Georgia, doesn’t want to eat poop. He e-mailed me and said he saw a woman from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control wearing a Don’t Eat Poop shirt and he wanted one for himself.

The shirt’s in the mail, Doug.

Tell me your best Don’t Eat Poop story and I’ll send you a shirt too.

Or you can give to the International Food Safety Network.

Give large. Give small. It’s all on-line at
https://one.found.ksu.edu/ccon/new_gift.do?action=newGift&CCN_FUND_ID=3894&SCENARIO=SELECTFUND

Any problems, just e-mail me, dpowell@ksu.edu.

And if you benefit from our services, then we’re continuing with our payment model that alt.music darlings Radiohead stole from us: pay what you want.

Sex, chocolate and meat best for the brain

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The Sydney Morning Herald reports that plenty of sex, dark chocolate and cold meats are the latest keys to boosting your brain power, according to a new book published in Britain

Terry Horne and Simon Wootton, authors of Teach Yourself: Train Your Brain, contend their recommendations are based on various chemical reactions within the body brought on by certain activities, and that those who want to stop their brain deteriorating should avoid watching TV soap operas, smoking cannabis and mixing with moaners.

While sex, dark chocolate and eating cold meats for breakfast top the list for the best ways to keep the brain fit, cuddling babies, cheating at homework, doing a business degree and reading out loud are also recommended.

"Mix with people who make you laugh, have a good sense of humour or who share the same interests as you and avoid people who whinge, whine and complain as people who are negative will make you depressed."

I’ll add in berries and beer.

Most recalled meat is never recovered

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Yesterday, Bill Marler listed the top 20 E. coli-in-beef outbreaks and recalls in the U.S. for 2007.

Apparently, most of that meat is either eaten, or never recovered.

That’s what Julie Schmit and Barbara Hansen concluded in USA Today today, after a review of recall data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

For 73 meat recalls this year and last, recovery rates per recall averaged 44%, but for five recalls that followed reports of consumer illness, recovery rates per recall averaged just 20%.

Kenneth Petersen, USDA assistant administrator, said that recalls spawned by reports of illness have low recovery rates because weeks or months can pass between when a product is produced, someone gets sick and illness is linked with food; recalls resulting from the USDA’s product testing tend to result in higher recovery rates.

There have been 54 meat recalls this year, up from 34 last year. For the most recent recalls, recovery rates are not yet available.

To get more consumers to check homes for recalled meats, the USDA next year plans to publicize names of retailers selling meat that was later recalled.

The story explains that on Sept. 29, Topps Meat recalled 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger because of potential contamination with the deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria. The recall, the second-biggest ever for ground beef, was well publicized. Still, New Jersey officials found 141 boxes of recalled burgers in 12 state stores about a month after the recall. Some retailers said they didn’t know about the recall, says New Jersey consumer affairs spokesman Jeff Lamm.

Recall fatigue is becoming a serious issue. In July, USA Today reported that retailers have been slow to pull Castleberry’s products that may be infected with botulism.

As I said in July, public communications about recalls need to be much more than a press release — they must be rapid, reliable, repeated and relevant, and that the produce outbreaks of 2006 marked significant changes in how stories were being told using Internet-based networking like YouTube, wikipedia, and blogs.

How much poop can humans safely eat?

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Kent Sepkowitz, a physician in New York City who writes about medicine, writes in Slate.com that,

"… one year ago, the now-famous E. coli outbreak arising from contaminated spinach rattled the natural-food industry and gave carnivores a moment of schadenfreude. The story had the heartbreaking elements we have come to dread: A young child eats something mundane and dies a horrid death. Boom, gone. I have (unsuccessfully) treated one such case and rate it as perhaps the most chilling moment of my career.

"With every outbreak, the same question sounds: Why can’t we keep the food chain clean? … The best response to E. coli and the other pathogens that cause food poisoning is to recognize, humbly, that we can get the food supply almost perfectly clean, but never completely. There’s just too much crap out there: human crap, horse crap, cow crap, pig crap. In the feces of these and other animals are trillions of infectious agents (bacteria, viruses, fungi, worms, and everything else that upsets the stomach). Try as we may to contain the mess, we can never win. Pig dung fouls rivers; cow crap seeps into water tables; human shit kicks back every time heavy rains overwhelm a sewage system’s filtration capacity. …

"Rather than frantically throwing money at new ways to eradicate the pathogens that reside in shit, we should fund the boring scientists who focus on untangling the intricacies of the gut’s immune system. Labs, answer this: How much shit can we safely eat and, as importantly, how much must we eat to remain healthy?"

While there is some truth in the doctor’s comments, humans just aren’t smart enough to figure out who is genetically susceptible to the various nasties out there. Maybe the population’s immunity can be increased by exposure to some cryptosporidium or salmonella or whatever, but individuals are gonna die. We’re gonna lose a few. And we don’t know who those few are.

So while we’re figuring that out, we have a responsibility to use the science we know to reduce the number of people who get sick from the food and water they consume. And don’t eat poop.

Safest meat in the world — especially in pot pies

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While introducing a Senate motion to block the movement of older Canadian cattle into the U.S., U.S. Senator Byron Dorgan (D-ND) couldn’t help himself and played the "safest meat in the world" card.

"American beef is the safest in the world, but increased importation of higher risk Canadian beef and cattle would undermine the confidence of our trading partners and cause further damage to our domestic beef industry."

Observers said it was doubtful the motion would pass.

U.S. has safest meat in the world; outbreaks increase

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I don’t know much about farm bills and state versus federal inspection.

But claims that,

"U.S. consumers enjoy the safest meat and poultry products in the world,"

especially as E. coli O157:H7 outbreaks in the U.S. appear on the rise and more sick people are identified in Wisconsin, seems to be the height of hubris.

But that’s what Ron de Yong, director of the Montana Department of Agriculture, wrote in the Montana Billings Gazette this morning.

An outdated federal law prohibits state-inspected plants from selling products across state lines despite a provision in the law that requires these plants to have safety standards that equal or exceed those of USDA-inspected facilities. …

There are many reasons to abolish the 1967 prohibition on interstate shipments of state-inspected meat. … Enabling interstate sales of state-inspected meat and poultry will provide economic fairness and open markets. New marketing opportunities not only will benefit producers, processors and small businesses, but also will give consumers more choices at the supermarket. This change is common sense and it’s the right thing to do.

Maybe. But spouting off about the safest anything in the world without the comparative data to back up such claims seems like a bad way to sell an idea.

“Safest meat products of any country in the world”

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Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., apparently ignored my plea for a moratorium on the "we have the safest food in the world" comments unless some data was provided.

Go figure.

The Billings Gazette cited Rehberg as saying Wednesday that U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab has assured him that the Bush administration will not push a free-trade agreement with South Korea until the country opens its market to U.S. beef.

Rehberg said the country was using "false arguments" to keep its markets closed.

"We have the safest meat products of any country in the world."

Bland blanket statements serve only to amplify rather than mollify consumer concerns.