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=What's in the Meat=

E. Coli has been infecting hamburgers in America for over 50 years. It is an almost indestructible microbe that can survive in freezing temperatures, acid, salt, chlorine, and temperatures up to 160 degrees fahrenheit. E. Coli can be spread in a number of ways, but the most common way is consuming hamburgers. Current FDA regulations allow dead pigs and dead horses to be rendered into cattle feed, along with dead poultry. Four cattle that bear the E. Coli microbe are being slaughtered every hour. When issues are raised about meat inspection, the meat packing industry always denies that the problems existed. The problems do not only exist in the meatpacking industry though, but also the restaurants in which they are served. There have been multiple accounts of teenage workers fooling with hamburger meat, including dropping the burgers or picking there nose, or even urinating on it.

**Opposing Research**
The Federal Meat Inspection Act was passed in 1906. It worked to prevent adulterated or misbranded meat and meat products from being sold as food and to ensure that meat and meat products are slaughtered and processed under sanitary conditions. The USDA inspection of poultry was added by the Poultry Products Inspection Act of 1957. All other inspections are by the FDA. A number of acts have been passed to ensure the safety of meat. If these tests fail, there is nothing much they can do to stop it. Also, there are relatively a small amount of people being infected with potentianally deadly microbe of E. Coli. Only 60 people died from E. Coli in 1999, and numbers have been dropping since.

Supporting Research
In 1999 it was estimated that about 73,000 Americans got sick each year from E. Coli. In bad cases of E. Coli, some long term effects such as blindness, kidney failure, and paralysis may occur.

http://meat.tamu.edu/meatinsp.html http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/qa_ecoli_sickness.htm