I Won't Gladly Pay You Tuesday, For A Tainted Hamburger Today

It's 11PM, do you know where your hamburger has been?

I tell ya, it's stories like this one, today, that can easily have you thinking the movie, 'Idiocracy' was a documentary, not a feature film.

Yves Smith, over on his Naked Capitalism, has a whopper (pun intended);

Tainted Burgers Show That Corporate Profits Trump Public Safety (Cargill and McDonalds Edition)

The object lesson is America’s addiction to hamburgers versus E coli. E coli gets into the food chain when feces get into the meat. Period. It’s a very straightforward contamination mechanism. And in this case, the party fighting for the right to eat contaminated food is Cargill, and one of its major suppliers in its burger business, a company called Beef Products.

It is a detailed, and tremendously fascinating, tale, on just how contaminated meat sold to the public is, how the enormocorps, in this case Cargill, are totally cool with that, as they, sanctimoniously, cite bullshit boilerplate tributes to "following regulations", and such.

And, in using information from NYT articles, Smith gets to the diss, who else, the NYT, for not connecting the dots in their own reporting.

I am hesitant to quote more from the post, as you need to read it, jaw-dropping paragraph, after jaw-dropping paragraph.

How does this happen?

Check out the post we did last year, on Food Inc., and the corruption deeply rooted in our food industry, and ties to Congress.

But go read "Tainted Burgers Show That Corporate Profits Trump Public Safety (Cargill and McDonalds Edition)", and, if you do eat hamburgers, start checking out the source they traveled before slapping them on the grill.


Bonus Riffs

Forget About Tuesday, Cash On The Barrelhead Today, Wimpy!

M'm! M'm! Good!

Spam-A-Lot ...The Eating Kind!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways Spinach Industry Plans To Overcome E. Coli Setback

Retro Garlic ... “There’s a food Ponzi scheme going on’’

Food, Inc. has opened in movie theaters this weekend, or, more to the point, in wider release.



In today's Boston Globe, Devra First interviews director/producer Robert Kenner;

Filmmaker offers 'Food' for thought

Q. Yet it seems so perfectly timed, with all the food-safety scares we’ve seen recently, the growing interest in locally produced foods, books such as Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma’’ . . .

A. I feel like we’re part of an exploding movement. There are so many things coming to a head. On the one hand, there’s the financial crisis. People are realizing there was a credit Ponzi scheme, and we’re all paying the price. The government didn’t regulate it. The parallels with the food world are pretty identical. There’s a food Ponzi scheme going on. The system is totally unsustainable. It’s based on gasoline, based on pollution. Twenty to 25 percent of our carbon footprint is from growing and transporting food.

[snip]

Q. The movie seems as much about corporate power as it is about what we eat.

A. It’s about our rights, our First Amendment rights. We’re not being given information, and we’re being denied certain rights because of the “veggie libel laws’’ that make it dangerous to disparage a food. People used to be scared of governments having so much power. Now we’re realizing it’s the corporations that have it.

Q. And yet corporations aren’t particularly well represented in the film, often declining comment. It seems they missed their chance to control their message, leaving the floor to people like Barbara Kowalcyk and Moe Parr.

A. I could have done a film on nuclear terrorism and had greater access than I had here. I wanted to talk to all producers, organic and industrial. I found the industrial producers ultimately didn’t want me to look in their kitchens. They didn’t want to go on camera. They don’t want us thinking about our food. There’s this myth that our food still comes from farms. They don’t want you to know what’s in it or how it’s produced.

The Retro Part;

Strap On Your Tinfoil Chefs' Hats

Food, Inc




Bonus Food Riffs

M'm! M'm! Good!

Forget About Tuesday, Cash On The Barrelhead Today, Wimpy!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Tell Tomatoes Are Safe Again

Spam-A-Lot ...The Eating Kind!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways Spinach Industry Plans To Overcome E. Coli Setback

Strap On Your Tinfoil Chefs' Hats

And, with good cause.

I had been looking at various articles, and posts, on the burgeoning Swine Flu pandemic (breaking this evening: 1. U.S. Declares Public Health Emergency Over Swine Flu, and, 2. It may be enormo-corp Smithfield Foods at the epicenter of it), and came across DownWithTyranny (you should book mark this blog - typically, excellent writing, research and perspective).

Behind The Food, Inc Movie-- Massive Bribes To Congress From AgriBusiness

Last night I went to see the Anvil movie. It was great. But a trailer for Food, Inc stuck in my consciousness as much as the story about these Jewish Canadian heavy metal rockers. And I found that trailer... for you ...

It's not just about healthy and nutritious food either. With the whole country alarmed about an unending series of food-borne illnesses and, courtesy of the "Free Market" Bush gang and their Republican accomplices in Congress, a hollowed-out FDA, more frequent sudden death from taking a bite-- whether from China, Mexico... or Georgia-- food industry lobbyists are pressuring the members of Congress they've financed to prohibit even debate on the food industry! Tools of AgriBusiness run the regulatory industries meant to protect consumers but that, under the GOP and the equally corrupt Blue Dogs, now protect only company profits.

And this video was posted;

Food, Inc



DWT details the huge money behind AgriBusiness Lobby, and also details the pols getting bagloads of it.

Then, I checked out the Food Inc website.

How much do we really know about the food we buy at our local supermarkets and serve to our families?

In Food, Inc., filmmaker Robert Kenner lifts the veil on our nation's food industry, exposing the highly mechanized underbelly that's been hidden from the American consumer with the consent of our government's regulatory agencies, USDA and FDA. Our nation's food supply is now controlled by a handful of corporations that often put profit ahead of consumer health, the livelihood of the American farmer, the safety of workers and our own environment. We have bigger-breasted chickens, the perfect pork chop, insecticide-resistant soybean seeds, even tomatoes that won't go bad, but we also have new strains of e coli--the harmful bacteria that causes illness for an estimated 73,000 Americans annually. We are riddled with widespread obesity, particularly among children, and an epidemic level of diabetes among adults.

Featuring interviews with such experts as Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation), Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma) along with forward thinking social entrepreneurs like Stonyfield Farm's Gary Hirshberg and Polyface Farms' Joel Salatin, Food, Inc. reveals surprising -- and often shocking truths -- about what we eat, how it's produced, who we have become as a nation and where we are going from here.

It's not Grandma's kitchen anymore.

It will be worth your time to check out the DownWithTyranny post, and Food Inc website.


Bonus Food Riffs

M'm! M'm! Good!

Forget About Tuesday, Cash On The Barrelhead Today, Wimpy!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways To Tell Tomatoes Are Safe Again

Spam-A-Lot ...The Eating Kind!

Top Ten Cloves: Ways Spinach Industry Plans To Overcome E. Coli Setback