I guess "where's the beef?" has been answered!

From what I heard on the news the bleach was to keep animals from getting into the bad beef and eating it.

I heard a story about this on NPR yesterday. Does the meat company replace the contaminated product or give your district a refund or something?

mmmm forbidden beef

They should collect all those tons of inedible beef and make the ultimate zombie movie.

What makes me mad is that there really was nothing wrong with the beef itself - it was the treatment of the animals involved. (Which was horrendous and made me come thisclose to being a vegetarian) So millions of pounds of beef went to waste, which is a crying shame.

Not accurate, redvixen. "Downer" cows - cows that wouldn't walk on their own - were mistreated by getting them to walk by prodding them with cattle prods or lifting them with forklifts.

The reason this is not permitted is not because it is cruel (although it is), but because not being able to walk is one of the ways that Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy ("mad cow disease") manifests itself. Since we think that eating meat from BSE-infected cows can transmit the prion to humans, where it causes Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, we must not must not must not allow "downer" cows into the food supply.

The articles have all been cheerily pointing out that no cases of illness from eating the infected beef have been noticed yet. They handily fail to report that the average incubation period of CJD is 5 to 20 years after the initial exposure.

Downer cow is one of those terms that you read and immediately want to apply to a human.

What ikkyu2 says, but for me, the far more important consideration - and the one rarely being talked about - is that the beef was only recalled because the handling of the downer cows was recorded on an undercover video. From what I've read (a lot) this sort of thing is not at all uncommon in American feedlot-slaughter plants. Obviously they would not display these techniques when USDA inspectors are present, but they are not often present. Other times, it appears to be business as usual, especially when the meat is not going to be voluntarily graded for sale in supermarkets. The utility/cutter/canner market (schools, prisons, military, pet food) is wholesale only, and grading is not required.

Eric Schlosser, who wrote the horrifying Fast Food Nation, wrote in a New York Times Op-Ed:

Over the past 40 years, the industrialization and centralization of our food system has greatly magnified the potential for big outbreaks. Today only 13 slaughterhouses process the majority of the beef consumed by 300 million Americans.

...While threats to the food supply have been growing, food-safety regulations have been weakened. Since 2000, the fast-food and meatpacking industries have given about four-fifths of their political donations to Republican candidates for national office. In return, these industries have effectively been given control of the agencies created to regulate them.

...Cutbacks in staff and budgets have reduced the number of food-safety inspections conducted by the F.D.A. to about 3,400 a year — from 35,000 in the 1970s. The number of inspectors at the Agriculture Department has declined to 7,500 from 9,000.

So the disturbing thing is not that some beef might have been contaminated, or that one plant made a mistake. It's that downer cattle, and this way of handling downer cattle, and the processing into meat of downer cattle, is basically SOP at all the major meat packing plants. We're only hearing about because a PR crisis and visual evidence have prompted the recall.

It's a jungle out there. It's a horrible waste of life and a crass display of greed and cruelty. These companies are an abomination.

There are a few interesting factoids about this.

First, when this story broke, a week ago, my district said that they did not have ANY of the beef in question. Put out a press release, which is still on the website.

Then, the State has been a but fumbly on it's directions about how to deal with the beef on hand. The warehouse guy told me he's sitting on the beef until he hears, but the State has put out guidance.

The County landfill wants to have a "beef day" next week, during which all agencies show up with what they have (I really want to see what 40,000 lb. of beef looks like. . .on second thought, no I don't). They will bury it on the spot.

As irony would have it, since it is February, Les Schwab Tires is in the middle of their "Free Beef" promotion, as anyone in the PNW well knows.

So I am waiting till 8, when the district PR people show up, and letting them know, if they don't already, that we DO have a bit of the beef (3.5K lb of "teriyaki dippers")

I will eat beef, incidently, maybe twice a year, if it's offered and I am in the mood. Never buy it, never have it at home, etc.

This is another example of why I like my job. . .you never know, when the phone rings, what it will be.