Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers
May 15th, 2009You are free, of course, to consume as many ConAgra’s salmonella ridden, genetically engineered gut bombs are you wish. Just don’t forget the “kill step.”
Via: New York Times:
The frozen pot pies that sickened an estimated 15,000 people with salmonella in 2007 left federal inspectors mystified. At first they suspected the turkey. Then they considered the peas, carrots and potatoes.
The pie maker, ConAgra Foods, began spot-checking the vegetables for pathogens, but could not find the culprit. It also tried cooking the vegetables at high temperatures, a strategy the industry calls a “kill step,” to wipe out any lingering microbes. But the vegetables turned to mush in the process.
So ConAgra — which sold more than 100 million pot pies last year under its popular Banquet label — decided to make the consumer responsible for the kill step. The “food safety” instructions and four-step diagram on the 69-cent pies offer this guidance: “Internal temperature needs to reach 165° F as measured by a food thermometer in several spots.”
Increasingly, the corporations that supply Americans with processed foods are unable to guarantee the safety of their ingredients. In this case, ConAgra could not pinpoint which of the more than 25 ingredients in its pies was carrying salmonella. Other companies do not even know who is supplying their ingredients, let alone if those suppliers are screening the items for microbes and other potential dangers, interviews and documents show.
Yet the supply chain for ingredients in processed foods — from flavorings to flour to fruits and vegetables — is becoming more complex and global as the drive to keep food costs down intensifies. As a result, almost every element, not just red meat and poultry, is now a potential carrier of pathogens, government and industry officials concede.
My attempt at the counter-cryptogon interpretation: “Well, globalism isn’t perfect, but as processes become more efficient, fewer and fewer of these kinds of ‘anomalies’ will occur (why? because ‘experts’ say so). So just [STFU and] hang in there. Oh, and if that doesn’t work, we’ll nuke every last morsel of food, water and (when we figure out how) air that passes your lips. Start buying stocks in the ‘anti-cancer’ sector of Big Pharma. NOW.
“Win/win!”
Honestly, something very like this (without the tongue-in-cheek) appearing in the ‘science’ reddit wouldn’t surprise me at all.
They also do that when they expect us to clean the dirt off the vegetable we buy, to not drink stuff past the expiration date, to clean off some of the pesticide residue, to cook raw meats, etc.
I’m sure this stuff has been killing people for longer than realized.
I have a buddy who eats large amounts of raw meat of all kinds. He believes cooking turns any food into poison. He’s been a big influence on a number of people around here, if only to rid us of the belief that raw meat is inherently dangerous (actually, almost all non-Western cultures have raw meat dishes of some kind or other).
Of course, the difference – and the danger – lies in the quality and freshness of the meat.
As a matter of fact he cured himself of Crohn’s disease doing this, essentially following the dietary path of cult-nutrition-guru Aajonus Vonderplanitz.
But more to the subject, I believe Vonderplanitz claims anecdotally of having spoken to a food-industry scientist some years ago, and this guy told him that the industry had done a major study in the ’40s or so feeding raw meat vs. cooked meat to animals. They were trying to prove the efficacy of cooking industrial food at different temps. But what they discovered is that the cooked food inevitably caused all kinds of health problems in the subjects, while the raw meat subjects retained glowing health. They supposedly buried the study, destroyed the evidence, and continued with their industrial-food agenda…because they NEEDED to cook the meat, to keep it from going bad throughout its long journey in the industry-infrastructure.