Organic Meat
If you want to avoid problems like
Mad Cow Disease, a fatal,
meat-borne illness, USDA Certified Organic
is the bare minimum standard you should
check for on your meat purchases.
Conventional meat producers not only confine
their animals in dark, dirty, sheds and
confinement lots for their entire lives,
they feed them ground up pieces of other
animals. This practice has been proven to
spread the prions responsible for Mad Cow
Disease, but it saves the producers a buck
so they just keep doing it. The various meat
industries say that since legislation passed
in 1997 they haven’t engaged in
cannibalistic feeding practices, feeding
ground cow scraps to other cows for example.
While this is a step in the right direction,
it is still legal for cow scraps to be
served to chickens and chicken scraps to be
served to cows. The prions responsible for
Mad Cow easily pass through this cycle and
back to the cows.
Here’s a link showing the improvements the
FDA made in 2004 to help
prevent the spread of Mad Cow, note the
reference to the ban on “most mammalian
protein to ruminant animals” what does that
mean, exactly? I’ve placed a call to
301-796-4540, the FDA Press Office, and am
waiting to hear back...
The USDA Organic seal on meat means that an
inspector from an independent certifying group,
accredited by the state or federal government,
inspected the production methods of the producer.
The inspector insures that the animal the meat
came from was not injected with hormones or
antibiotics and was fed only organic feed,
without the addition of adulterants like ground
up animal parts. Additionally, the animals are
supposed to be treated more humanely than
conventionally raised ones: given fresh air,
sunlight, and access to pasture. As I discovered
in my research on dairy, however, my idea of
humane and the industries idea are very different
things.
Don’t be fooled by labeling that reads “natural”
as natural doesn’t, though it certainly should,
mean organic. No rules require that meat packaged
with the “natural” label are fed organically,
allowed to move or go outside, or raised without
hormones and antibiotics.
Green on a Shoestring:
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