Ramanisblog

Tag: nonvegetarian

  • The Recession Is Taking a Bite Out of Meat Consumption

    One good spin off of recession.

    The recession is having one positive effect. The national cholesterol is going down.

    More than half of Americans have cut back on meat, many becoming “recession-bred flexitarians,” says Gourmet magazine–people who use meat as a condiment not as a meal anchor.

    Even the doyenne of taste and nutrition, Martha Stewart, broadcast a vegetarian Thanksgiving show last week.

    A small drop in meat exerts big consequences on your health says Katherine Tallmadge of the American Dietetic Association because red meat is the “primary source of saturated fat, which can boost levels of bad LDL cholesterol and inflammation.”

    It is no doubt the reason death from heart attacks goes down not up during recessions as Christopher Ruhm, an economist at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro reports.

    Unfortunately, it also has a big effect on meat producers for whom the droves of flexitarians are equivalent to Atlanta and all its suburbs going vegetarian. And that’s before you consider the effect that the swine, sorry H1N1 virus has had on the pork industry.

    To address the low demand emergency, the Washington DC-based National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) has a kind of Cash for Clunkers plan.

    Funded by American Recovery and Reinvestment Act revenues, its Meat the Need proposal would increase the amount that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients receive in food assistance if they use it for animal products. Recipients would either get a separate electronic benefits transfer (EBT) card or earmarked vouchers.

    “Product purchases will quickly reduce the oversupply on the market while additional funding to SNAP for meat purchases will allow low-income families access to more nutritious meals,” says the NASDA proposal.

    The government purchase program makes so much $ense to producers with unwanted products, 16 businesses expressed their support in Missouri alone including the Missouri Dairy Association, Missouri Dairy Growth Council, Missouri Cattlemen’s Association, Missouri Egg Council, Missouri Pork Association, The Poultry Federation and ag oriented bankers.

    But there are some wrinkles.

    What good is a temporary program if the changes Americans have made in what they eat, spend and drive become permanent after the recession? What if, after our austerity, a consuming, go-go lifestyle no longer appeals?

    Is it really conscionable to dump products that the American Cancer Society, the American Heart Association and almost every other health group say to limit on poorer people because no one else will eat them? To boost the economy? Because they have less choice? Especially when the products include processed meat, known for its carcinogenic potential?

    Aren’t people with lower incomes who receive food aid disproportionately plagued with diabetes, obesity, heart disease, metabolic disorders, high blood pressure, gallstones, fatty liver and obesity-related cancers already?

    Is dumping food no one wants on the least fortunate any different than the nice venison hunters offered to food pantries two years ago except that it might be contaminated with the mad cow like Chronic Wasting Disease and lead? (The pantries refused it.)

    Or the plan in Illinois to “harvest” the Canadian geese that live at so many subdivisions and corporate parks for the poor to eat? We’re not that hungry food pantry recipients said.

    Doesn’t dumping high calorie, high fat, high cholesterol food undermine government wellness and school lunch programs which emphasize vegetables, fiber and exercise?

    Finally isn’t the hallmark of a capitalist versus command economy demand? When it’s there you become a Bill Gates and when it’s not, an AOL?

    Isn’t an oversupply of milk, pork or beef the market’s own rejection slip? As in 8 track tapes and pantyhose?

    No NASDA’s Meat the Need program which it admits “promotes the policy of providing nutritious meat and dairy products to families while clearing excess inventory of those products,” is just an industry-first-public-second initiative which makes the poor into a client state.

    Why not create a program called Light Their Need giving cigarette vouchers to the poor? Tobacco farmers probably need assistance too.

  • Eating Meat May Cause Sickness, Paralysis and Death.

    Published in AlertNet

    By Tom Laskawy, Grist.org. Posted October 12, 2009.
    http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/143136/warning:_eating_meat_may_cause_sickness,_paralysis_and_death/?page=entire

    This year almost half a million pounds of E. coli infected beef have been recalled and sadly the government is far more concerned with protecting companies than public health.

    It’s hard to draw any other conclusion from Michael Moss’s New York Times blockbuster investigative piece on E. coli in industrial beef, which is centered on the plight of Stephanie Smith, a young dance instructor left comatose, near death and now paralyzed from eating a single Cargill hamburger. Of course, a “single hamburger” can include meat from hundreds, some would say thousands, of animals. As Moss puts it:

    Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

    This is why a food safety expert who helped develop tracking systems for E. coli in meat can declare that, “Ground beef is not a completely safe product.” No kidding. The problem, however, is not with E. coli in general. The problem is that the particular strain of E. coli which infected Smith — known as E. coli O157:H7 — is virulent, deadly, persistent and endemic in industrial beef. How virulent, deadly and persistent? This much:

    Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen.

    In other words, if a piece of infected meat ends up in your kitchen, you are almost guaranteed exposure to it no matter how carefully you handle it. And how endemic? This year alone almost half a million pounds of E. coli infected ground beef have been recalled nationwide (and that doesn’t include the 800,000 pounds of Cargill beef recalled for contamination with antibiotic-resistant salmonella). Indeed, if Moss’s work proves anything, it’s that the safety systems in industrial beef processing are both barely functioning and almost fully opaque. And while the government is able to peek behind the curtain at these massive slaughterhouses and processing facilities, it seems far more concerned with protecting companies’ intellectual property than with the public health:

    The meat industry treats much of its practices and the ingredients in ground beef as trade secrets. While the Department of Agriculture has inspectors posted in plants and has access to production records, it also guards those secrets. Federal records released by the department through the Freedom of Information Act blacked out details of Cargill’s grinding operation that could be learned only through copies of the documents obtained from other sources. Those documents illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets.

    In one of the most chilling, and I thought devastating, quotes in the entire piece, a top official at the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service observed that his options were somewhat limited since he had to “look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health.” Note the fact that his phrasing sets the meat industry’s needs at odds with ours — the two can’t be reconciled in his eyes. What does that say about the government’s ability to ensure a safe food supply? No matter how you structure it, the industry now appears too big and too powerful to be regulated. What other explanation is there for the fact that the top food safety job at the USDA remains unfilled if not regulatory paralysis — the meat industry seems to have veto power over its regulators and hasn’t found a federal overseer to its liking.

    One area that Moss does not cover is how E. coli O157 got into industrial beef in the first place. In fact it’s there because of the meat industry’s insistence on feeding cows corn — something they cannot easily digest — instead of grass. Among other things, corn feeding requires cows to be fed a steady dose of antibiotics, which has led to the rise of antibiotic resistance among various pathogens. But more importantly, it has caused very real changes in the cow’s gut which has allowed this toxic strain of E. coli to take hold, a strain that research suggests cannot survive in the gut of cows that eat only grass.

    In short, E. coli didn’t just “happen” to the meat industry — it’s a consequence of industrial practices. But nowhere in the article (or in the halls of the USDA or the largescale beef producers for that matter) is the possibility of moving away from this corn-based system raised as a solution for the industrial system. Surprisingly, the article includes virtually no proposed solutions for this crisis — just vague assurances that the USDA isn’t “standing still” on the issue. In reality, the industry focuses exclusively on “managing” the ongoing presence of E. coli O157 though the development of an E. coli vaccine for cows, and irradiation or chemical washes for the meat. All of which are attempts to mask the risks of a failed system and represent an institutionalizing of the underlying failures. And none of which make me ever want to touch industrial meat again.

    Indeed, if there ever was a powerful argument for eating only grass-fed beef from small producers, this article is it. The only conclusion worth drawing from this expose is that industrial ground beef simply isn’t worth the risk. And without wholesale industry and regulatory reform — neither of which appears likely or even possible, it may never be.
    Comment:
    When one eats nen vegetarian food,the animal proteins are converted into vegetable proteins and only then is ingested by human system.Why then go for non veg. food?

    Remember, animal’s meat ,which we eat, gain their nourishment from vegetables and grass.

    Why don’t we go to the source as animals do?

    Also meat has a chance of being infected as is evidenced in this case.