061007_beef_cow_meat_generi.jpgYum!

Just in time for the last three-day holiday of the growing season, the USDA issued a Class I Recall (Health Risk: High) for 331,582 pounds of ground beef.

Nope, make that 21,700,000 pounds of ground beef – give or take a few ranches feedlots.

How much hamburger is that, pups?

Well – funny you should ask.

21.7 million pounds of ground beef just happens to be an entire year’s worth of production.

Topps Meat Company LLC has expanded its recall to include 21.7 million pounds (9,800 tonnes) of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria, the Elizabeth, New Jersey-based company said on Saturday.

The beef has a “sell by date” or “best if used by date” between September 25, 2007, and September 25, 2008.

Topps has a problem with bottoms.

You see, the E.Coli bacteria lives in our intestines – in the material physicians know as feces and the rest of the world knows as poop, crap, shit…the list runs on forever.

And with E. Coli contaminated meat, you may also.

E. Coli meat contamination is the result of cow shit in your meat. Or steer shit in your meat. Or calf shit in your meat.

E Coli (or Salmonella, or Campylobacter…) chicken contamination is the result of chicken shit in your chicken.

And how do we know when there is shit in our meat and chicken?

We get sick.

What – did you think someone tested our chicken and meat?

What are you – some kind of Communist?

The failed, dead hand of regulation was dragged off the production lines long ago.

(and tossed into the hot dog makings, but that’s another story).

Sigh.

Here it comes, you’re saying – another article about the Bushies pushing safety regulations off the edge of a cliff.

Except this time it wasn’t the Bushies who pushed food safety over the cliff.

Sure, they stomped it to death when it was wounded, but that’s just the compassionate conservatives’ reflexive cure for suffering.

Nope – meat and chicken food safety got pushed off the cliff under Big Dog.

By Big Dog’s big contributors: Big Chicken and Big Meat.

[For such a smart guy, you'd think Big Dog wold have been more careful with his Big Macs.]

You see, up until 1997 the USDA actually had US Government inspectors in the slaughterhouses, inspecting each chicken and steer and lamb and pig and turkey carcass.

Looking for things like infections and tumors and worms and pus.

Oh – and the chicken shit and the cow shit and the pig shit that carries the E Coli, Salmonella, and Campylobacter so many of our local ER’s – and coroners – have come to know and love.

Under Big Dog, in 1997 the USDA stepped away from the slaughterhouse when industry stepped up and “volunteered” to push the USDA inspectors off the production lines.

The USDA’s inspection arm – the Food Safety and Inspection Service – handed over their inspections to Big Slaugterhouse “volunteers”, in a nifty new program called HACCP

Gee – I wonder which slaughterhouses were the first to “volunteer” for the new program that allow more shit in their products?

Well – any slaughterhouse that wanted to speed up the lines: and make more money.

The self-inspection program, which was implemented in 1997 in a handful of plants that volunteered for the project, originally used only company “inspectors” to examine carcasses. The program was revised in 2000 to require a token government inspector at the end of the slaughter line to observe tens of thousands of carcasses rapidly moving by each day. However, the inspector may not look inside carcasses, where much contamination resides. The HIMP program also relies on chemical washes, sprays and other “interventions” to treat contamination that is still on the carcass.

Under the prior inspection system, beef, pork and poultry were inspected continuously during slaughter and processing by government inspectors who relied on sight, touch and smell to check for animal disease or fecal matter. There were two to four inspectors per plant, and slaughter lines were much slower.