This has been a rotten Christmas season for the American pork conglomerate Smithfield Foods.
Last week the Humane Society of the United States released a grisly report and undercover video on the disgusting treatment of pregnant sows at one of its industrial swine facilities in Virginia. And this week, Russia announced it will not buy pork products from the company's Smithfield, VA plant, because they are tainted with "residue and pathogen issues."
Pig producers who sell meat to Russia must wean their animals off antibiotics at least two weeks prior to slaughter (Japan requires a four-week flush-out period) and certify that their products contain no residue from the tetracycline antibiotic group, and no signs of generic Salmonella or Listeria monocytogenes, a highly virulent pathogen that kills up to one-third of the people infected and can also cause miscarriages.
On Monday Russia announced that, effective December 31st, it will no longer permit the import of pork products from the Smithfield plant in Virginia, as well as Tyson Foods' Waterloo, Iowa plant and Farmland Foods' Monmouth, Illinois plant.
It was a blow to the US pork export industry, which is still reeling from the swine flu disaster that wounded exports. In March of this year, Russia agreed to accept US pork again, as long as it was certified as free from the aforementioned drugs and pathogens.
It's not the first time a foreign country rejected US meat because of concerns over contaminants. For example, a truckload of beef was turned away at the Mexican border when inspectors found levels of copper (heavy metals are added to animal feed to prevent intestinal parasites) far in excess of Mexican safety standards. The meat was turned back and sold to consumers in the United States, where there are no standards for copper in beef.
Which begs the question, especially in this season of carnivorous indulgence: What do the Russians, Japanese and Mexicans know about our meat that we don't?
Smithfield produced 27% of all US pork products in 2007 and Tyson churned out another 17%, which you might keep in mind if you are buying ham, bacon or sausage this week. The animal you are eating could well have been born in a windowless piglet factory, where his mother was held prisoner in a tiny metal crate during pregnancy, then grief stricken as her still-nursing young were yanked away, before she was artificially impregnated once again.
Your young pig was then transferred to a nursery facility -- another sealed off building crammed with thousands of animals -- before ending up at a "finishing operation," where he was raised on concrete slats over pits filled with ammonia emitting excrement, and supplied a steady diet of drugs, heavy metals and other unnatural feed additives that accelerate growth and stave off disease long enough to get him to market weight.
There is also a small chance that your hog was infected with MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), or drug-resistant staff infection. In 2005, nearly 100,000 Americans faced life threatening illness from MRSA and 18,650 died: 50 percent more than the number of AIDS death that year.
If you happen to bring infected fresh pork into your home, you really want to wipe down your work areas with extra caution, and don't expose cuts, or children, to the raw meat.
Happy Holidays.
I eat very little pork. Pigs are smart and, sorry to gross you out at Christmastime, Aztec nobles once informed their nauseated Spanish captors that pork tastes just like people. They couldn't get enough of the stuff.
But this year, I think I may just get myself some pig. I recently joined the Park Slope Food Coop, which carries a limited but wonderful and not horribly expensive selection of beef, chicken and pork grown on small, independent farms in the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains, where animals are raised on little but grass, grubs, sunlight and fresh air, all within a three hour drive of my home.
I've been to some of these thriving family farms, and I have seen how happy, healthy, and free the animals appeared. I have been to factory farms as well, and there is little comparison.
And though my humanely raised pork could still harbor Salmonella or Listeria (always handle all raw meat carefully) the chances are less likely. And I am thrilled there is no chance that my meat will contain drugs, added heavy metals, or any other little gift courtesy of the American pharmaceutical industry.
I'm picky that way, just like Russia.
David Kirby is author of the book "Animal Factory" (2010 St. Martin's Press)
David Katz, M.D.: Dukan Diet: The Fad Diet of 2011?
If one switches to humanely and organically raised pork (which I support by the way--I buy local grass fed beef, etc.), does it follow that this pork will have a greater chance of being infected with the parasite? Either way, the answer is to do as I was raised to do--cook the pork until it reaches the appropriate temperature to kill any existing parasites.
I don't know if organically raised animals are actually more prone to getting these age old parasites, but I believe that cooking pork thoroughly is a good practice.
http://www.ediblecommunities.com/radio/blue-plate-special-with-kurt-michael-friese/episode-28-blue-plate-special-with-david-kirby.htm
I am so glad Smithfield is paying the price for not caring about animals. Each and every time you take a bite of an animal you need to know it suffered for you.
The Huffington Post deserves an award for being brave enough to expose this stuff.
H.R. 4733—Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act
Recently introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives by Rep. Diane Watson and Rep. Elton Gallegly, the Prevention of Farm Animal Cruelty Act (H.R. 4733) is a federal bill that would require the U.S. Government to purchase animal products only from entities that do not keep animals in gestation crates, veal crates or battery cages. Since almost all major packers and distributors do business with the federal government, this legislation would have a significant impact and dramatically improve animals’ living conditions in many farms across the nation.
In order to sell to the federal government, producers would be required to meet minimum humane standards (they would have two years from the date of the Act’s enactment to do so). Their animals would have to be provided with adequate space to stand up, lie down and turn around freely without any impediments, including tethers, and without touching the sides of their enclosures. Animals must also be able to fully extend all limbs without touching the sides of their enclosures—and in the case of egg-laying hens, fully spread both wings without touching the side of an enclosure or another hen.
A yes vote on this could change a lot in the farming industry.
It didn't take a year into his term before he slashed all inspections (there used to be a veterinarian at the end of every slaughter LINE, now one MAY visit a slaughterhouse every quarter).
The food safety decline did not stop with meat, it has extended to every type of food we eat, but most people are unaware of how these low standards crept in.
That's how evil people do things, they sneak their agenda in gradually so people are somewhat numbed by the eventual mass casualties.
Beef, pork, poultry, wheat, corn lobbies for one.
Monsanto for the rest with their bribery to contaminate every faction of food with growth hormones and genetic modification.
The best way to convert people away factory-food to humane food is by preparing dishes more deliciously and at affordable prices.
It takes imagination and culinary style. The health food fare at restaurants is either too expensive and dorky, or fried soy protein concoctions imitating chicken-ham-beef fast food. Duh! The key advantage to health food is it's ability to amaze the taste buds with simplicity and seasoning. The added benefit of being cruelty-free is the cherry on top.
What's sorely needed is a melty, drippy, stretchy, salty, nutritious mozzarella cheese substitute and a national pizza chain to popularize it on a whole wheat crust delivered in 10 minutes by guys in white smocks. And it has to be invented by non-vegans who still know what real cheese tastes like.
This would win many more converts than any gross-out stories and videos from the factory floor.
So, tackling the demand side is the way forward, but it's difficult. It requires some work to find reputable suppliers, and sacrifice to accept that humanely-raised meat is significantly more expensive than the cheap poisoned kind... which means eating it significantly less often.
Working my way through college meant living in near poverty for a few years, so I am acutely aware of just how unappetising a way it is to live. It is very possible to eat organic, fresh, locally-produced food even at that income level, it's just not fun (I still can't face lentils, even years later). So, that leads us to the question, what price is our families' health? Polluted meat is easier and cheaper, until the medical bills start rolling in, or until the unsustainable system collapses from concentrating the breeds too much, and exposing them to too much disease.
How do we convince people to change what they demand? We would not demand the cheapest surgeon, or the cheapest safety helmets, so why do we do it with food? "I have a family to feed and no money" is an inadequate answer. There are alternatives, they're just not convenient and tasty.
I agree 100% with what you said. We all need to take a stand!
Organic is labor intensive and fuel intensive. Examples: GM crops eliminated cultivators but organic farms still need to use them. No-Till GM soybeans has about 4 trips through a field per season. Organic soybeans need at least 7 trips using smaller, fuel inefficient equipment. It's just math. Non-farmer urban folks don't want to seem to read stuff like this to keep their nostalgic myths about small farms alive, but the truth is obvious.
www.eatwild.com/products/oregon.html -