The trouble with meat - foodborne pathogens - includes related articles - Cover Story

E: The Environmental Magazine, May-June, 1998 by Jim Motavalli, Tracey C. Rembert

The Cato Institute's Jerry Taylor denies that cleaning up the meat industry will slow the spread of E. coli and Salmonella since, he believes, these recent strains "have absolutely zip to do with the food system." But Fox cites the example of Sweden, which has virtually eliminated Salmonella and drastically cut rates of Campylobacter infection through a strict hygienic regimen that includes rigidly controlled cleanliness for workers and the emptying, cleaning, disinfecting and sealing of hen houses after birds are sent to slaughter. Sweden also prohibits the use of antibiotics as a growth promoter. By killing other bacteria in chickens, Fox writes, commonly used poultry antibiotics can actually create an opportunity for Campylobacter or Salmonella to invade.

The animal waste problem is also a factory farming by product. One chicken house can process 1.5 million birds a week, and release 1.6 million gallons of wastewater per day. In one month in 1996, the state of Missouri had more hog manure spills and resulting fish kills than had occurred from all farming operations in the state in the past 10 years. Wastes once stayed on the farm, where they were used as manure. But, says Fox, "industrial meat companies are not farms, so they don't recycle wastes. It ends up in the ecosystem, creating enormous problems."

Speed-Up on the Slaughterhouse Floor

Even if we fully adopted Sweden's methods, and our factory farms became as clean as hospitals, disease would still be rife in our meat supply. The reason can be found in the next stop in the modern farming assembly line: the slaughterhouse.

Animal slaughter has become a multinational business. In 1980, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), it took 53 companies with 103 plants to slaughter two-thirds of the country's cattle; by 1992, only three firms were doing the work in just 29 plants. Between 1984 and 1994, some 2,000 small slaughterhouses were driven out of business. The remaining mega-companies, many of them carrying big debt loads after consolidation, needed to maximize profits, and they did it by reducing workforces and speeding up the kill line. Factory workers say that inadequately stunned animals regularly run wild in slaughterhouses, endangering line employees, either look the other way at food safety violations or lose their jobs.

According to Gail Eisnitz, author of the 1997 book Slaughterhouse, the other thing that fell by the wayside as the line cranked up was meat inspection. Eisnitz, who interviewed many slaughterhouse workers and federal meat inspectors, some of whom lost their jobs for talking to her, says, "The Humane Slaughter Act, while still on the books, has basically been repealed. Meat inspectors are not allowed to stop the line for violations -- even though the law requires it -- because their supervisors won't allow it. The inspectors I talked to went on the record and said that the regulations are just pieces of paper that they're unable to enforce. Deadly, contaminated meat is just pouring out of those plants, and I have the documentation to prove it."