Clean meat

This story is as much a condemnation of unrestricted trade with China as it is of factory farming.

Interesting thing came our recently from a journal called, The Progressive Grocer. It seems 75% of consumers no longer believe that our food supply is no longer safe. I'll see if I can dig up a link.

Need I point out that prior to the industrialization of farming ... farms and the food supply were, by every objective standard, LESS clean, LESS healthy and LESS safe? (Oh ... and less food was readily available too.) I disagree. Growing up in the 50's and 60's I don't recall ever hearing about the problems in our food supply that keep cropping up today. Further, who knows what the American diet, with its high protein, hormone and chemically-laced meat, dairy and egg supply is doing to the sensitive reproduction systems of young girls. It is the opinion of sound medical science that the younger girls begin puberty (which is accelerating in the west) the higher their risk of cancer later. Aside from all the health considerations, factory farming is inhumane and environmentally destructive. There's no getting around it. Encouraging Americans to stop gluttoning on fast food, eating more fruits, grains, vegetables and moderate amounts of lean protein raised in a healthy environment would be the better way to go. I sorely miss the local farmer's markets in Europe where my relatives and I would shop when I visited.

Pauli, she does have a point, I think, in that so much of the food Americans consume is so processed, filtered, manufactured, etc. that we end up eating not cheese but "cheese-product". What the heck is that? One of the contaminants that found its way into dog food came not through rice, but through some kind of gawd-awful 'rice protein'.
It's not the chicken from a big-name producer per se that bothers me: it's what the growers have pumped into the bird - that's out of their control, too - that worries me. Precisely because I don't think we have any idea half the time of what's in it.

Umnnnhhh..."artificial" or not, the critters are grown and processed under FDA standards, meaning that they do NOT contain melamine. At least, until PRChina got involved in the supply-chain. I'll go with #1 above: the condemnation rests w/Red China. By the way: that spinach problem was a result of "natural" fertilization--cow poop got into the soil. Go ahead, tell me that the spinach problem was perfectly fine with you.

I won't laugh, it's one of the best things about you. This is _real_ ethical action, not airy-fairy allegiance to myths and rituals.

"Our current relatively safe food supply is largely the results of a century of government regulation and public health measures." No doubt some of this public regulations was beneficial. But much of it benefited the larger food producers (who could absorb the costs of regulation)at the expense of the smaller, local ones. And some of this regulation was in response to industrial food production, i.e., a way to make a bad system work and smooth off the rough edges. In other words, absent the rush to factory farming and chemical-dependent livestock, the particular regulation would not have been needed. Remember: this century of regulation helped get us where we are. And while where we are is not terrible, there are many, and increasing, downsides.
In California I can walk into a store and buy unpasteurized milk, cow or goat. Try that in "free enterprise" Texas!

...that we end up eating not cheese but "cheese-product".... But "we" don't eat "cheese-product" in my family, whatever that is. And we buy organic whenever we can. I stand by my remark; the frenzied over-reporting distorts any comparison between the present and the past in regards to scare stories. That's one reason why so many of us shrug off Crunchy Conservatism. It's based too much on anecdotal impressions which ignore the distortive effect of the 24-hour (bad) news cycle.

Early industrialization of food production actually made the food supply worse. Compared to what? What went before? Hardly. (And "The Jungle" is only a comparative work if you have a jones for Tolstoy's Noble Peasant.)
Modern pasteurization requirements are a direct result of child deaths from industrial milk production. Milk didn't rot or have dangerous microorganisms in 1885? Sorry ... but this is just rubbish history that confuses the occasion of a thing for the cause of a thing. Yes, the specific regulations on the food supply came as a result of muckraking against industrial food production (made possible by another "new thing" of the late-19th century -- the mass media). But that doesn't mean either (1) that earlier food produced "more naturally" was safer (it probably wasn't, simply because cleanliness generally and preservation means/technology were so incomparably inferior), or (2) that the specific hazards of industrial food production (solvable through regulation and technology) weren't worth the trade off gained in modern times' far greater abundance and reliability.
Our current relatively safe food supply is largely the results of a century of government regulation and public health measures. You forgot technology, which allows regulations to be met and more-stringent ones to be passed (how DOES one measure the allowable amount of rat shit in nonindustrial food) and is actually far more important in re general public-health. But more importantly, these regulations and measures are only tolerable in a society so rich and with food so abundant that it can afford the inefficiencies that they produce.

But public food safety measures over the last century have generally done more good than harm. Rich, I saw nothing in Victor's writings to indicate that he was opposed to government safety regulations. If fact he seems to support them (e.g. "the specific hazards of industrial food production (solvable through regulation and technology").

I'm not laughing. But I think we have more to be concerned about than just meat, as this section of the article shows: [The FDA] was expanding testing of imported ingredients and finished products that contain cornmeal, soy protein, rice bran and corn gluten. Those ingredients can be used to make many products, including breads, pastas, pizza dough, baby formulas, protein shakes and energy bars. That to me is the real kicker with this melamine contamination - is it in the thousands of refined-grain products that fill the "middle aisles" of grocery stores?
How much kidney disease in humans is related to possible melamine food contamination?
The China connection bothers me, too. If this were an American company that contaminated a food ingredient, they'd already be sued into bankruptcy. Instead, we don't even know where this garbage came from - the company connections are tenuous. Nor is there any criticism of China (our wonderful trade partner.) This one stinks for so many more reasons than simply sick dogs and cats.