If there is anything that consumers have learned about the dangers inherent in not policing the meat industry and the safety of processed foods in the marketplace over the last twenty years, it should be that mixing the meat of different animal species results in Frankenfoods.
This term was coined some time ago by the organic food industry to describe the horrors coming down the pike, as food processors, left to their own unsupervised devices and motivated by money, (and perhaps unbridled idiocy) proceeded to mix (or glue) two or more forms of meats into single 'bundles' for supermarket distribution. And this was not just out of curiosity to see what they tasted like, because often such products are totally tasteless, but to mask bad quality, use up slaughter scraps, hide leftovers, and make money from useless or contaminated tidbits better thrown away.
Most people are too busy with the details of their own lives to chase down where their food comes from. That it is readily available at a corner market is enough, and they prefer to leave the details to the food police. Busyness often results in the bulk of the U.S. population wolfing down multiple tasteless meals daily, so little is expected – and thus little is provided. The information is out there — detailed and frightening — but only if one were literally to go and search it out.
Mad Cow Disease
Bovine Spongiform Encepholopathy (BSE), generally known as Mad Cow Disease, was played down by the news media when it first cropped up (1976) in health publications and then ended up on the evening news. It was said to be a virus picking off our cattle herds, then perhaps a bacteria. Later it was properly researched and traced to a little error by major livestock food suppliers who prepared an untested commercial menu for cattle that included offal (slaughterhouse meat scraps) ground up and added to grains in stock feed, under the innocuous name crude protein.
These suppliers were trusted, and assumed to be experts in animal nutrition, yet they have no compunction— and possibly no knowledge—of the dangers that can result from trick-feeding herbivores into eating a carnivorous diet. It screws up their systems and creates diseases unknown in the natural world. So clearly it’s not easily recognized or corrected once it manifests.
Of course it’s bad enough that food animals are fed trash, become sick, and then their infected bodies make their way into human food supplies. But what about the larger issue of the evolution of food processing in this current age, where humans and human businesses create these Frankenfoods with possibly good or just mistaken intentions? There is certainly a line in the sand that should be drawn to protect consumers when businesses get so “creative” that many lives are at risk.
Don’t Expect Government Protection
The FDA has proven itself to be impotent in so many areas that the government cannot be expected to be the first line of defense here. The big question is whether there is any answer that can provide safe food to current and future generations in the face of big business and their lobbyists whose money now rules nearly every industry and is infiltrating even government regulatory agencies.
When it becomes common knowledge that a powdered concoction of enzymes and dried pork blood has been created as a "meat glue” that food processors are using to turn slaughter and meatcutting scraps into fake filet mignon for financial gain, it seems time for someone to yell Whoa! at the top of their lungs. When this is neither previously disclosed to the consumer nor required to be labeled, and except for being tasteless you can’t tell the difference, whoever said “What you don’t know won’t hurt you”?
Sources:
- Miriam Kresh, Meat Glue is Everywhere, The Green Prophet, Mar 22, 2011
- Lorraine Day M.D., Mad Cow Disease-What the Government Isn't Telling You!
Marie Thomas - Marie Thomas (RieT) is an author in multiple genres, with 18 years in technical writing, and freelance work in science, biographical, and ...
