Ok it's been a while since I posted last, not due to a lack of things to say but rather the time to say it in. The time to put that conscious thought into something intelligent, readable, and, well, fun for the whole family... That said when I come across a headline like "Cow washer aims to fight germs at Calf. beef plant" I'm really left with no choice but to respond.
The Cargill owned beef processing plant, Beef Packers Inc., which processes in excess of 1 million pounds of beef per day at its 60 acre facility, and who recalled about 82,6000 lbs of that same beef last year due to salmonella fears, has invested over $4 million dollars in a "cow cleaning system" to help prevent further salmonella outbreaks. Apparently this cow car-wash "cleans the hides of carcasses prior to slaughter with spinning bristles and high pressure nozzles filled with an anit-microbial solution."
Just for some background information, these extremely unsanitary facilities are nothing more than overcrowded prisons for animals where they get to live out there last days literally shoulder to shoulder standing or laying in their own feces, a breeding ground for deadly bacteria such as salmonella and E. coli.
So in an effort to remedy this unpleasant yet obvious effect of yet another brilliant man-made problem, what better place to look then to a man-made machine as the most obvious viable solution...
Forget the fact that whatever chemicals used in the "anti-microbial" solution that most definitely soaks through the hide into the muscle tissue which we eat is most likely toxic when consumed. Forget the fact that organic sustainable grass-fed farms do not have these major bacteria outbreaks with their animals due the natural, more "common sense" approach to farming that they use.
As always though it's ultimately your choice; meat from happy grass fed animals living their lives as free as a farmed animal can be, or power-washed bacteria ridden meat from unhealthy corn/antibiotic/steroid/de-wormer fed animals.
