Mohtalim

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la- ... 4574.story

I have long confined myself to only eating grain- and grass-fed beef, on the assumption that if the people selling grain- and grass-fed beef care enough not to give me mad cow disease, they probably care enough not to give me E. coli. However, it is sort of silly that people have been pointing the finger at US meat for nearly a decade and nothing has changed at all.

Also, meat is apparently a monster of a lobby and a $70 billion/year industry. Intel alone cleared 2/3 of that last year, and the rest of the personal computer industry is much, much bigger. Yet our lobby is powerless. What the hell?

One of the classic American novels was about unhealthy meatpacking practices early last century. I don't remember which, Upton Sinclair or Updike, or one of those sorts. So, it's been a problem for more than a decade.

However, I suspect that our food supply is actually extremely safe. It's like airplane travel. It's so uncommon for problems to occur that everyone notices when they do.

Also, realize that the meat (and agriculture) lobbies represent the dominant source of employment in many regions and many states. If you have employ half the constituents in half the congressional districts in the country, you control half the congress with a quarter of the population (exact numbers obviously vary).

The Jungle - Upton Sinclair is what you're thinking of.

Actually, I was more thinking of Fast Food Nation and The Omnivore's Dilemma, which talk about the modern meatpacking industry. I'm not concerned about them shoveling shit into the sausages. I am concerned about feeding dead animals to meat animals, butchering downers, E. coli contamination on lines that are too fast, and a lack of enforcement of our nation's laws.

I have some faith that the FAA is keeping unsafe pilots and planes out of the air. I have no faith that the USDA is doing the same for meat.

Then you haven't been watching the news. There are apparently fairly regularly near-collisions of aircraft at and near airports. There was just recently a story about one of the airlines failing to do proper maintenance during a strike and successfully pressuring the FAA to overlook the lapses.

Putting customers at risk and circumventing regulation for profit happens in every industry. It's worth fixing if you have the power to do so, but probably not worth worrying about if you don't. You're a lot more likely to die of stress-related heart disease than E.coli or a plane crash.