crappy American meat

[ChrisD(RJ)]

Chicken McShitlets
Would You Like Salmonella Sauce With That, Russia?
By Mark Ames
In the debate over American chicken imports to Russia, the American press
has uniformly glossed over or dismissed what the Russian side says is root
of the problem: namely, American chickens present a significant hazard to
human health. 
The possibility that the Russians actually mean what they say has not even
entered the periphery of the discourse. Instead, the spin America gets is
that either Russia’s poultry ban is in retaliation for US Steel import
tariffs, or it’s just another example of Russia’s
corrupt/bureaucratic/anti-American/anti-free-market culture. 
What you probably don’t know, however, is how dangerous American chicken
really is, how seriously this threat is taken by a range of health and
consumer groups within America (as well as within Russia), and yet how much
influence the meat and poultry industry have over both the American
government and media in order to successfully quash the debate while at the
same time making our meat more and more dangerous to our health. 
In August of last year, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a
non-profit Washington D.C.-based organization comprised of 5,000 physicians
and more than 100,000 supporting members, filed a petition with the US
Department of Agriculture to warn the public about the health hazards posed
by American-raised poultry, and to urge the government take measures to
clean it up. 
Specifically, they called on the USDA to declare feces, which is prevalent
in US chicken meat, to be declared an adulterant and therefore unfit for
sale. They also asked the USDA to have a biohazard label attached to chicken
meat warning consumers that the chicken is likely contaminated with feces
and therefore foodborne pathogens such as salmonella, E. Coli and others. 
In other words, American chicken is saturated in shit. 
Mindy Kursban, PCRM’s staff attorney, said, “Under current regulations,
people can become ill and even die from eating poultry and meat that passed
USDA’s inspection because the current inspection system is too weak to
protect consumers.” 
Did she say “die”? Yessiree! The Centers for Disease Control estimates that
each year there are at least 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations,
and 5,000 deaths caused by foodborne pathogens in the US. Eating chicken and
meat contaminated with feces is the primary means for transmitting foodborne
diseases to humans. 
That’s shit in plain-folks' talk. Lots and lots of shit that we eat. 
Part of the problem is the hellish overcrowded conditions that the birds
live in, where they wade in each other’s feces and vomit. 
Then there’s mechanization. Machines, which can kill 70 birds per minute
(three times more than just 10 years ago), are supposed to remove the
intestines but more often than not wind up ripping the birds' insides,
spilling shit on the body cavity and equipment. “Fingers” on the machines
which are designed to rip off the feathers, also pass feces, vomit and blood
from chicken to chicken. 
Then there is “fecal soup.” Thousands of dirty chickens are bathed together
in a chill tank, creating a mixture known as fecal soup that spreads
contamination from bird to bird. Consumers pay for this fecal soup when they
buy chicken, since up to 15% of US poultry weight consists of fecal soup. 
All of this takes place during a period in which oversight and regulation
nearly vanished. In 1996, the Clinton Administration introduced new
guidelines, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) program,
which took federal inspectors out of the line and handed responsibility of
oversight, including inspecting the amount of feces in the chicken... to the
industry producers themselves! 
What is the result? Drum roll please... 
The incidence of salmonella-infected US chicken has risen from 29% in 1969
to up to 60% of chicken sold today. 
Who woulda thunk that appointing an industry to monitor itself for health
violations would, like, put profits over people’s health. Isn’t the magical
free market supposed to take care of that? 
Nope. Here’s proof. In a recent report by the USDA s Office of Inspector
General, 210 inspectors (out of 327 responding) indicated that since HACCP
began at their plant, there have been instances when they have not taken
direct action against contamination (feces, vomit, metal shards, etc.) that
they observed and would have taken action under the old system. Of those,
206 said this occurs daily or weekly. 
Inspectors now derisively call the HACCP “Have A Cup of Coffee and Pray.” 
A USDA Inspector named Ronnie Sarratt was quoted in one report saying, “I’ve
had birds that had yellow pus visibly coming out of their insides, and I was
told to save the breast meat off them and even save the second joint of the
wing. You might get those breasts today at a store in a package of breast
fillets. And you might get the other in a pack of buffalo wings.” 
Previously, inspectors used to condemn all birds with air sacculitus, a
disease that causes yellow fluids and mucus to break up into the lungs. In a
1989 article in Southern Exposure, USDA inspector Estes Philpott of Arkansas
estimated that he was forced to approve 40 percent of air sac birds that
would have been condemned 10 years ago, before Ronald Reagan began gutting
the USDA inspector’s budget. 
Today, after Clinton’s near-complete abandonment of federal inspectors, the
situation is part gross-out comedy, part bio-terror. 
This, say the Russians, is the problem with American chicken. It’s soaked in
shit and vomit and swarming with lethal pathogens. They want real federal
regulators to regulate the chicken, not industry hacks. 
“There are several problems with your poultry. The main one is that in the
US you don’t believe bacteria like salmonella to be a health hazard,” said
Sergei Kouznetsov, spokesman for the Agriculture Ministry’s Press Service,
in an interview with the eXile. “Our doctors have a different opinion. We
consider this a major health hazard.” 
The problem with American chicken is that, based on an agreement signed in
1996 between the US and Russia, USDA inspectors are required to inspect the
chicken meat. However, shortly after the agreement was signed, the Clinton
Administration handed responsibility for inspecting the meat to the
producers themselves. 
“I’ve been to the US plants myself,” said Kouznetsov, who lived in the
United States for four years. “I’ve seen people with tags on saying USDA
standing on the line where the chickens are gutted, but actually they are on
the payroll of the companies. So you can imagine.” 
According to Kouznetsov, just in the past year, the incidence of
salmonella-infected chicken shipped from the United States continued to
increase. 
“In recent years and recent months, there has been an increasing number of
shipments tainted with [foodborne pathogens],” he said. “We warned the USDA
but we got no response, and that’s because the USDA has no control anymore.
Only the ban we imposed this spring brought the Americans to the negotiating
table to discuss how we can make the American chicken healthier.” 
Beyond the issue of fecal soup is the problem of antibiotics in chicken
feed. While Americans are left to the mercy of the free market to decide if
ingesting antibiotic-saturated chicken meat is healthy or not, the Russians
still rely on government medical experts. And they fear that humans, eating
this meat, will render many antibiotics useless while at the same time
helping to create Superbugs that are antibiotic resistant. 
Russians aren’t the only ones worried about antibiotics in chicken feed. 
According to Linda Bren in the Food and Drug Administration’s Consumer
Magazine (January/ February 2001), there is new evidence that drugs used in
poultry can cause antibiotic resistant diseases in those who consume
chicken. Tyson uses fluoroquinone, an antibiotic used to keep chickens and
turkeys from dying of E. coli infection. Fluoroquinone does kill E.coli, but
another bacteria, campylobacter, may build a resistance to this drug.
Campylobacter is linked to the most common diarrheal illness in the U.S.,
affecting over two million people each year. 
The chicken industry is also the single most hazardous industry for workers.
One in six workers become injured. A large number are immigrants, legal and
otherwise, who are grossly underpaid. There are constant lawsuits, even
today, against the large producers to force them to pay workers for forced
overtime. Horror stories of employees gaining little or no compensation from
workplace accidents abound, but OSHA inspectors are all but banned. 
Among the proposals that the Russians are making are to provide federal, and
not industry-hired, inspectors; provide complete lists of antibiotics in the
chicken feed, and ban those deemed harmful to humans; and prepare a new
forge-proof health certificate for the meat (Kouznetsov said that the
Russians found numerous forged documents from American shippers). 
Reaching an agreement has been difficult. “In the evening, we’ll come to an
understanding, and in the morning the Americans will return and reverse
their positions,” Kouznetsov said. 
This is incredible: a supposedly barbarian country, Russia, imposing
stricter, and saner, inspections on its meat, and demanding that America do
the same. 
In other words... WHEN IT COMES TO POULTRY, RUSSIA IS MORE CIVILIZED, AND
MORE CONCERNED FOR ITS CITIZENS’ WELFARE, THAN AMERICA! Doesn’t that go
against the stereotype Americans have of Russia, and of themselves? Not only
that—isn’t anyone pissed off that the reason people get more ill more often
is because the government has colluded with the food industry to put us all
at risk? And now Russia is being asked to do the same? 
Russia isn’t the only country afraid of American poultry. US chicken meat is
essentially banned from most of the First World for exactly these reasons.
Half of all US poultry exports, some $800 million, went to Russia before the
ban. Other major consumers are Mexico, Hong Kong, Eastern Europe... in other
words, countries not normally known for their high civil standards. (Maybe
it's time America should be recognized as one of the leaders of this pack of
countries.) 
Only Americans seem to be okay with this. That’s because, in large part, the
media and the government are in the meat producers’ pockets. Investigative
pieces into the workings of the meat and agriculture industry are usually
met with shareholder-frightening lawsuits. There have been several cases of
journalists’ careers destroyed for investigating the likes of Monsanto. 
Over the past decade, the agro-industry pushed through “veggie libel laws”
in thirteen states. According to Eric Schlosser’s book Fast Food Nation,
“These laws make it illegal to criticize agricultural commodities in a
manner inconsistent with ‘reasonable’ scientific evidence. The whole concept
of ‘veggie libel’ is probably unconstitutional; nevertheless, these laws
remain on the books. Oprah Winfrey, among others, has been sued for making
disparaging remarks about food. In Texas, a man was sued by a sod company
for criticizing the quality of its lawns. In Georgia and Alabama, the veggie
libel laws have been framed in imitation of British libel law, placing the
burden of proof upon the defendant. In Colorado, violating the veggie libel
law is now a criminal, not a civil, offense. Criticizing the ground beef
produced at the Greeley slaughterhouse could put you behind bars.” 
This might explain why Americans aren’t bothered—they don’t know about it.
Indeed, a PCRM survey last year found that 84% of Americans didn’t know that
foodborne pathogens are passed through feces on the food. In fact, they
don’t even know that the chicken they buy at the store is literally swimming
in shit, pus and vomit. 
The agriculture industry succeeded in subverting the American Constitution
and put Americans’ lives in danger in order to boost profits. Why, they must
be thinking, can’t we do the same in Russia? If they can do it in America,
surely, they can do it anywhere they please.