Safe Beef, Luxury or Myth?

Almost anyone who eats meat, especially beef is asking themselves, "How safe is it?" When we're sick for 24 hours we call it "stomach flu" but the experts more correctly link it to tainted food—mostly meat. The ridiculously poor oversight of the meat industry has threated my very core of happiness. I mean, I never imagined that a forklift full of beef could ever bring tears to my eyes in a bad way.

I'm not naive, I know that you've got to kill a lot of cows (or pigs) to fill the empty grills of America. Heck, I need the ribs of at least two dead cows to lovingly finish with my special BBQ sauce after the smoker. The problem is, I don't want to be serving up animals that can't walk to their own slaughter—it just seems unsafe somehow.

The USDA has issued assurances that this most recent violation was an isolated incident, coincidentally uncovered on the day the Humane Society decided to plant a camera at the Hallmark/Westland meat packing house. Afterall, USDA (or FSIS) has the same dilligent inspectors (who failed to catch this singular incident) at every other slaughter it oversees. So rest assured, but pack your kids' lunch if you can afford to, since school lunches depend on meat from these suspect factories.

The USDA also asserts that most of the suspect meat from this plant has been eaten already and with no serious incident reported. Of course even if a thousand kids got sick to their stomach, it is not an unual thing. Still, somewhere between 5 and 10 thousand people die in the USA from gastrointestinal illness and the bulk of it is from unknown causes, so who's to say it isn't bad meat?

All I'm thinking is that the rules are there for some reason, presumably health-related. If I don't have assurance that the beef was handled according to minimal guidelines, I don't think I'll take my chances—even by following the handy cooking and handling proceedures stickered to every raw meat package. Call me pathic but I want to be able to eat my meat red and still count on being able to clean my grill the next day. Sure I drink a couple of beers with my steak but I checked, and the alcohol in beer doesn't kill the stuff I'm worried about.

In truth, I buy my meat mostly from suppliers who boast of their humane treatment of their livestock before it becomes dead. However, I've been known to occasionally eat out and that is even more terrifyingly risky. I not only have to rely on the process from slaughter to delivery, I also need to know that the people preparing the food are doing so in the safest possible manner. I am not really a man of faith.

So, USDA and Beef Council (whoever you are) be advised: I demand safe, quality beef that has been humanely raised, properly handled and can walk on its own. Use forklifts to carry the meat once it's packed into nice little boxes and not on animals that are still alive. But, it's not enough to tell me that this is what you are doing, since you've already lied to me. (Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.)

PROVE IT! Or, expect me to learn to grill eggplant.