Good, safe beef. No shit.
This post was written a few years ago, but unfortunately contaminated meat keeps being relevant to our world, so it a handy explanation of what is happening.
This simple, folks. e.coli 0157, the deadly pathogen recently discovered in ground beef processed in Nebraska, comes from feces. Yup, feces. Eric Schlosser wrote about this in his seminal work: Fast Food Nation, only he didn’t use the word feces. So, how does meat get contaminated, and how do we know our meat is clean?
First, two ways meat gets infected: from feces in entrails which get cut by knives during high-speed processing, or second, from crap attached to the hide not fully cleaned before the animal is killed. Pretty disgusting stuff, especially in light of what we are led to believe when we see mass-produced-factory meat in nice-looking packaging with bucolic farm scenes in the pictures. Why is ground beef usually the suspect? And why aren’t people getting sick from fresh-ground beef? When beef is ground at the slaughterhouse, it can contain contributions from a large number of animals. Much of slaughterhouse grind comes from mechanically separated (i.e. muscle torn from bone by powerful hydraulic machines) meat and inevitably some undesirable bits can get into what we eat. (Ever really wonder why factory ground beef is recommended to be cooked to 165 F?) FYI, Paul and I feed rare beef from Marczyk’s to our sons; beef ground from whole muscle in small shops have a much less likely chance of containing contaminants for obvious reasons…we can see it, and we can smell it. Plus, it’s not mechanically separated in the first place. No bits and chunks thrown into a grinder. Remember “ground chuck?” that’s what we do here at Marczyk Fine Foods. We grind chuck. If you want, we’ll show them to you.
Here’s the deal: you have a choice. Why wouldn’t you buy hand-ground beef made from whole muscle right in front of you just like your parents and their parents did for years and years? Remember when a hamburger tasted good? You can have that now. Our Butcher’s Choice® ground beef is made at least twice a day; it sells for $3.79 a pound, and we’ll wrap it any way you like–including for freezing. No attitude, no b.s. (literally) and all from sources who NEVER use antibiotics or hormones in the production of their meat. You deserve it. Your kids deserve it. The animals deserve it.
Pete Marczyk
Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 6:13 pm and is filed under Marczyk Fine Foods. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
thanks for that
My bro saved this internet site for me and I have been reading through it for the past couple hrs. This is really going to benefit me and my classmates for our class project. By the way, I enjoy the way you write.