Beef Recall, Hot Lunch, and Dog Food
This is cross posted from our sister site, Silicon Valley Moms Blog.
On Sunday, the USDA recalled 143 million pounds of beef from Chino-based Hallmark/Westland meatpacking company. DC Metro Mom blogger Joanne posted about the recall here a few days ago. Over the past two years, thirty-seven million pounds of meat from so-called downer cows were shipped to school lunch programs. Schools are busy pulling meat from freezers, but our kids already ate most of it, according to the the Department of Agriculture's food safety official. Thankfully, the meat is not known to be tainted with e. coli or another pathogen. It's "just" from sick cows, so Hallmark/Westland thought they could get away with it.
I'm curious why it took this video from the Humane Society for the USDA to wake up. These issues with putting downer cows in our food supply are not new and are quite widely known. According to Michael Pollan's book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, a third of slaughtered cows have liver abscesses that would kill them within months anyway. These aren't even the downer cows, who presumably have worse issues.
This all leads up to a conversation I had a few months ago, when I got a question from a mom of a kinder at our school:
"Your son told my son that 'hot lunch' served at school was the same as dog food. Is that true?" Time for that video:
Maybe I was too honest with my kids...
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Hi.
They just announced another one today.
Just thought your readers may be interested in a new recall information source.
http://www.totalrecallinfo.com
Take care.
Posted by: chris | May 19, 2008 at 10:30 PM