J. Patrick Boyle, the President of the American Meat Institute (every college applicant’s favorite safety school), wrote in to the New York Times about last Sunday’s E. coli article.
Boyle’s closing paragraph had me shaking my head and wondering how he could possibly believe that his argument was in the meat industry’s best interest:
The meat industry has a single-mindedness when it comes to E. coli O157:H7 — we want to eliminate it. But like other facts of nature — from floods to the flu — even when there is a will, there may not always be a way to do it 100 percent of the time.
By asserting that E. coli 0157 is one of the “facts of nature,” as inevitable as floods and influenza, Boyle has opened a can of worms for anyone who wants to give the matter some thought.
- Is packing cattle into feedlots, where the excrement can be smelled from miles away, a fact of nature?
- Cattle at the feedlot often wallow in their own manure, so it gets caked to their hides prior to transport to the slaughterhouse. Is that also a fact of nature?
- Is giving ruminant animals a diet of corn, so they’ll bloat up with abnormal levels of intramuscular fat, yet another a fact of nature?
- Finally, is keeping slaughterhouse line speeds at hundreds of cattle per hour just one more fact of nature? The faster workers must cut, the greater the possibility for contamination.
As I understand it, these four issues have been key to E. coli’s emergence and persistence within the beef industry. Yet if you read Boyle’s letter, he’s pushing to deal with E. coli by getting the government to approve treating beef with radiation. I suppose in Boyle’s world, nuking beef is yet another…fact of nature. (Via Hawthorne.) Link.
