Thursday, October 15, 2009

Do You Want Fries With That?

This probably comes under the category of "things I kind of already knew but didn't wish to dwell upon", how a burger is made:
the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
Uruguay, so at least the burgers are multicultural!
Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows.
Anyway just thought I'd put that up for the benefit of anyone who is going to read this before dinner.

4 comments:

asquith said...

Let's niot forget that the cows were "fed" on total shite that their stomachs weren't designed for.

http://www.theecologist.org/trial_investigations/336873/killing_fields_the_true_cost_of_europes_cheap_meat.html

I am a vegetarian. But if I ate meat I'd source it from local farmers, wild fisheries etc.

Of course it's our taxes that are enabling farmers to ruin our health & the environment in this manner, trying to produce as much fatty "meat" as they can knock out in their factories. Here is some business you, given as you seem to be a fairly libertarian conservative, would find much to agree with:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Killing-Countryside-Graham-Harvey/dp/0099736616/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255632548&sr=1-1

Yes, the ultimate blame is laid at the door of (would you guess it?) Attlee, & the EU hardly get a warm & friendly treatment either.

I am generally quite sceptical of the state (though not a libertarian). I see here it needs to do more in one department, regulation, but far, far less in another, which is the subsidies that sod up the market.

& don't get me started on this drive to encourage "biofuels", which most environmentalists solidly oppose.

This is also a favourite of mine.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/13/rspb-uk-charity-deforestation-birds

I am solidly on the RSPB's side on this. I am a member of the Woodland Trust (apart from anything else you can buy Christmas cards in bulk & never have to worry about getting individual ones!) & I am fully conbvinced that native woodland, as old as it can possibly be, is environmentally superior to plantations thrown up to appease some tit's conscience over how many "eco" houses he's just built.

Mark Wadsworth said...

I like eating the occasional hamburger, as do most people. And it hasn't killed me.

James Higham said...

Did you have to? I've just had Maccas downtown.

Ross said...

"Did you have to? I've just had Maccas downtown."

I care about the nutrition of my readers.