Food Politics

I appreciate all calls for cleaning up the nasty CAFO situation.

Thing is, in terms of your last statement, this very thing, vaccination, IS considered a prevention.

It would be better stated that we need to be honest and instead of using a method that needs a healthy immune system (vax, and these animals are NOT healthy and likely will NOT mount effective immunity in response to the vax) we should demand nothing less than the dismantling of the CAFO system, investing in real small family farms (current and start ups) and more abattoirs in relevant locations.

Until this is done, I am unimpressed by any effort to immunize against this or any number of other pathogens endemic to beef, pork and chicken CAFOs.

Agreed, Nika. Especially regarding the abattoirs; that’s one of the biggest things that is holding a lot of farmers in the upstate New York/Vermont area back from processing and selling their own meats, rather than auctioning off their dairy cows to CAFOs for processing. There is simply a complete lack of processing facilities, butchers, abattoirs, and the general whole nine yards.

This makes me wonder about re-thinking the logistics of the meat processing line. I have never actually seen the inside of a meat packing plant, so pardon my ignorance. But, if the big cause of E. Coli contamination of meat is fecal material, why not install a couple of car-wash type steps in between the meat carcasses leaving the “dirty” area and arriving into a “clean” area? Seems to this consumer that better washing of the meat prior to processing should help.

i agree, we need to address the source of the problem, not try to patch it up.

stop feeding cows corn/soy (which they are not meant to eat).

and stop confining cows in large CAFOs. this is the main problem for our health & the environment. why do cows get manure all over their hides? because they are crammed together & standing in large pools of it all day. CAFOs have to be stopped / addressed.

Vaccinating meat animals during their life will not stop contamination during the butchering process. Vaccination only seeks to reduce half the problem. And, just like us humans who have negative reactions to vaccinations, a negative reaction in a meat animal could cause worse contamination to the meat than the e. Coli we have now. And because it has become an urgent matter, the vaccination would be rushed into use without diligent testing: more money for big Pharma, more uncertainty for eaters.

Local, pastured meat from a farmer you know and trust is the only way to go.

Or we could stop force-feeding cows an unnatural diet of corn. Or at least stop supporting companies that do. You know, just a thought.

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Until you live on a small family farm and work with cattle for a living please do not pretend to be educated on what a cow should and should not eat. The large farms are killing the small family farmer. Trust me we can’t make any money these days. as far as additional vaccinations are concerned that is just another cost that is not needed. Why penalize us small farmers for something that is caused further down the line by someone’s negligence? Small family farmers need to be given back control THEN you will see a drop in disease and inhumane treatment.

I see know one has brought up the idea of eating less meat, and thereby easing up some of the strain that is on our factory food system.

Irradiation and vaccines are a salve to cover a wound on an injured food and agriculture system; a system that is set up to place a premium on healthy, minimally processed food, while on the other end making sure we have enough crap ingredients to go into $0.99 fast-food hamburgers and all you can eat $4.99 buffet troughs.

no one…

[...] get a flu shot to prevent getting sick – should the same logic apply to vaccinating cows against e.coli? Or should consumers be insisting on better, safer processing methods and cows not fed on corn and [...]

From what I’ve read about this bug:

1) Because it does not cause disease in cattle, their systems see it as normal so it is not a matter of those with healthy immune systems not having it.

2) The cattle’s diet has some effect but not a big enough one to prevent it or even reduce it much. I’m pretty sure that it has been found in cattle out grazing grass and eating nothing else.

3) I wonder if it might also be a problem with hamburger from smaller abattoirs but it just isn’t being detected. It seems to me that a lot of people must have eaten hamburgers made from the big grinding batches compared to the number that got sick and started the tracking of the problem. If that is true, small lots could have the same level of risk but the probability of detecting them is much lower than big lots having the same level of risk.

See wikipedia Escherichia coli O157:H7 entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escherichia_coli_O157_H7

Escherichia coli 0157:H7 Infections
http://www.cfsph.iastate.edu/Factsheets/pdfs/e_coli.pdf

For really extensive references, see CIDRAP – http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/index.html
http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food-disease/causes/ecolioview.html

As Michael Pollan documents-put cattle back on grass and they shed 80% of the harmful E. coli. Cows are ruminates and need grass not corn.

I’m not sure if vaccination is the answer at this point, but I am very leery of irradiation. The amino acid, lysine, could be susceptible to being put out of balance by that process.

http://thedailybite.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/monsanto-pulls-gm-ly038-high-lysine-corn-from-eu-irradiated-pet-treatsfanconi-syndrome-link/

Thanks for mentioning that spinach outbreak! I did not know that. Grass feeding does seem like the easiest solution – and I do eat grass-fed beef in part for that reason – but it’s better to know the full truth.

Vaccination sounds pretty ridiculous to me. In humans at least, vaccines allow an individual to be a carrier. They do not prevent the bacteria or virus from existing in the vaccinated organism, just from getting sick through the excessive proliferation of said organism. So wouldn’t vaccinated beef create a higher prevalence of E. coli across the industry, but with a lower level of contamination per individual cow? I’ll take non-vaccinated, thank you.

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