If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
If you have something to say...
Say it on the Huffington Post
Is it acceptable that an accidental spillage in the kitchen refrigerator or the incorrect handling or cooking of meat at a restaurant can now result in a life-threatening -- yet entirely preventable -- antibiotic-resistant disease? Well, Big Ag seems to think so.
Deadly outbreaks of foodborne illnesses have been all too common in recent years, from salmonella-tainted peanut butter to E. coli in vegetables. We now have a real opportunity to reverse this disturbing trend, if we do it the right way.
Have you ever noticed that the USDA recommends that steaks and roasts be cooked to 145° while ground beef should be cooked to 160°? Have you ever wondered why there is a difference? After all, beef is beef -- right?
I've known for a long time that chicken can be toxic, but an April article in the New York Times showed that almost half of the chicken in grocery stores is contaminated by E coli, which researchers say is an indicator of fecal contamination.
You may be unaware of a small produce-testing program tucked away at USDA. At a cost of only $4.5 million a year, it's one of the most efficient and successful uses of taxpayer dollars; and yet, it's been zeroed out of the 2013 budget.
Food poisoning: If you've ever had it, and you probably have once in your life, your skin just crawled. Sorry.
Testing is not true prevention, and we still have a long way to go toward cleaning up the industrialized meat system. It also doesn't make ground beef completely safe or, for that matter, healthy. But it's a start.
With this list of nine fluffy, cuddly, sweet, innocuous things that aren't quite what you thought, we'll take you on a fun-filled ride where the underbelly of everything you've ever loved is revealed.
So the filler which is the subject of so much controversy has not been in our food supply for "20 years." But what about that claim by BPI and its supporters that the use of this filler has been without incident?
The One Gold Medal We Don't Want to Win: U.S. Leads the Way in Breeding Antibiotic-Resistant Disease
We use more antibiotics per kilogram of meat produced than any other nation in the world -- and we use 12 times as much as the country using the least, Norway.
The beef industry is pushing back hard in the last few days against opposition to Lean Beef Trimmings, better known as "pink slime."
Conventional wisdom has it that the genetic changes underlying evolution are random accidents. Now that we have almost 60 years of DNA-based molecular genetics and genome sequencing behind us, a different picture has emerged.
On the first day of Christmas my food maker gave to me: Listeria in a cantaloupe.
When it comes to matters of global human health, surely honesty and transparency must always prevail? Unfortunately, history tells us otherwise.
Currently, the USDA tests meat and poultry products for Salmonella and has limits in place for how much Salmonella can be in any particular testing sample of meat. But the limits are woefully inadequate, and they aren't enforceable anyway.
Think your chances of getting sick are slim? Ever had the "24-hour flu"? Well there's no such thing. Urban legend. What you probably had was food-borne illness.
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