With all of the news of food recalls due to potential risk food-borne illness, the world seems like a scary place. It seems like a place where you can't even trust the government to protect us from bad food. Some would argue that is the case. Well, a group of cattle and beef producers have gotten together to ensure that you can trust your food, at least your beef and they have created a label to prove it.The VeriPrime group is a new organization of independent ranchers and farmers that have established a rigorous new set of rules and procedures for raising/producing cattle and beef. They claim that their certification process is much more thorough and exacting than current government regulations. The rules were developed by veterinarians and nutritionists, and are ensured by "independent third-party audits." VeriPrime hopes to expand the label to cover other meats, poultry, dairy, and vegetables in the future.
If you see this label on beef products in your supermarket, you're supposed to know that it's totally safe. Call me cynical, but just because they say it doesn't make it necessarily true. I do think that any extra level of certification is a good thing. Isn't it also usually the case that industries which police themselves are generally more trustworthy (seriously, I'm asking)? All I can say is that, while I hope that this is a good thing, no label can be a 100% guarantee.
4-08-2008 @12:44PM wescraig said... What do you mean by trustworthy? Totally cynically, I'd say that this is an attempt by the "beef council" to recapture some consumer confidence in their product. To whatever extent that requires them to *actually* make their product safer, I think you can trust them to do so.
But don't you want more than that from the people supplying your food? I don't know about the trustworthiness of other self-policing industries, but the beef industry feeds cattle the absolute cheapest stuff they will tolerate, stuff they are so unsuited for that they need to be heavily medicated to survive the experience. There's lots of evidence that spending a few days out of the feed lot on pasture lowers cattle e. coli rates dramatically, but I see no mention of that in VeriPrime's best practices.
I'm skeptical, and suspect that this is just crass marketing.
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