There’s a part in the movie Food, Inc. where Eric Schlosser says there’s stories about food contamination repeatedly in the news. Today I came across three. Since I just reviewed the movie yesterday I figured I’d make the News Round Up a food edition.
From Grist:
Lessons on the food system from the ammonia-hamburger fiasco
“In case you missed it last week, The New York Times ran an excellent article on a South Dakota company called Beef Products Inc., which makes a hamburger filler product that ends up in 70 percent of burgers in the United States.
To make a long story short: Beef Products buys the cheapest, least desirable beef on offer—fatty sweepings from the slaughterhouse floor, which are notoriously rife with pathogens like E. coli 0157 and antibiotic-resistant salmonella. It sends the scraps through a series of machines, grinds them into a paste, separates out the fat, and laces the substance with ammonia to kill pathogens.”
I did miss this last week but the movie interviewed a guy that worked at BPI. Ammonia in food?! Anything called “pink slime” can’t be healthy.
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From ABC Action News:
Thirsty? Bacteria linked to feces found on soda fountains
“If you’re chugging a soda from a fast food joint, you may want to put it down and read this.
A team of microbiologists from Hollins University found that 48% of the sodas they tested from fast food soda fountains had coliform bacteria, according to Tom Laskawy, a media and technology professional and blogger for grist.org.
Coliform is typically fecal in origin.
On top of that, the study found that most of the bacteria were resistant to antibiotics.”
Yes this is gross but to play devil’s advocate for a minute-Couldn’t one argue that many surfaces in high traffic areas could be breeding grounds for bacteria?
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From Raw Story:
17,000 potentially harmful chemicals kept secret under obscure law
“Of some 84,000 chemicals being used commercially in the United States, some 20 percent — or 17,000 — are kept secret not only from the public, but from medical professionals, state regulators and even emergency responders, according to a report at the Washington Post.
And the reason for this potentially harmful lack of openness? Profit.
A 1976 law, the Toxic Substances Control Act, mandates that manufacturers report to the Environmental Protection Agency any new chemicals they intend to market, but manufacturers can request that a chemical be kept secret if disclosure “could harm their bottom line,” the Washington Post reports.
(snip)
And chemical makers may be abusing their privilege under the law. According to the EPA, in recent years 95 percent of manufacturers’ reports of new chemicals have made some request for secrecy. Ten of the secret chemicals are used in children’s products.”
What, big business abusing its privileges and keeping information secret?!? Say it ain’t so!
Posted by Vixen as News at 10:25 PM CST