One of the visible signs of our broken government and lobbyist ruled, Wall Street driven regulatory system is the factory food operations.  In their quest for growing quarterly profits we all pay with our health and the health of our food supply and economy that works best when we have sustainable relationships.  Please check out localharvest.org for a small family farm near you and join a CSA or start one Local Harvest has tools for those too.  This is factory food reality, we don't need to support it with our food dollars!

 

The product is "so covered in bacteria that researchers at the University of Arizona found more fecal bacteria in the kitchen -- on sponges and dish towels, and in the sink drain -- than they found swabbing the toilet." Thank God, one of nation's top producers of "lean, finely textured beef" (a.k.a. Pink Slime!) went bankrupt.

Actually, that first line wasn't talking about pink slime, which some say is actually safer than untreated ground beef according to food safety advocates. That line was talking about a much bigger safety threat: White Slime (a.k.a. chicken).

Mark Bittman, reflecting on chicken in the New York Times noted: "Bill Marler, a leading food safety lawyer, told me he assumes that 'almost all chicken and turkey produced in the U.S. is tainted with a bacteria that can kill you.'" That's a fair assumption: According to Consumer Reports, "two-thirds [of store-bought chickens] harbored salmonella and/or campylobacter, the leading bacterial causes of foodborne disease." As Men's Health magazine colorfully notes: "It's a wonder broilers don't come with barf bags."

Public health expert Dr. Michael Greger offers this more graphic description, which I tagged in my opening line: