"meat industry" news and stories

More than 40 percent of packaged meats sampled from three Arizona chain stores tested positive for Clostridium difficile (C. diff), a bacteria that can cause intestinal distress and, very rarely, death. About 40 percent of the cooked products and nearly 48 percent of the ready-to-eat products showed evidence of C. diff. Nearly 30 percent of the tainted samples of ground beef, pork and turkey and ready-to-eat meats were identical or closely related to a super-toxic strain of C. diff that's a growing problem in hospitals across the country.

But there are no proven cases of humans getting C. diff from food; it's almost always hospital transmitted. And if food-person transmission is possible, it's not known if the levels of bacteria in the supermarket meat are high enough to cause infection. But it does seem to add to the growing evidence that overuse of antibiotics, both at home and in meat processing plants, are leading to nasty superbugs. Yet another reason to eat sustainably-raised hormone and antibiotic-free meat.

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A viral campaign produced by website Sustainable Table, The Meatrix is a cartoon that reveals "the lie we tell ourselves about where our food comes from." It started up a few years ago, and has since been translated into 30 languages and boasts new features.

Not familiar? Though cleverly animated and peppered with humorous anecdotes, The Meatrix films are definitely not a joke, and probably not suitable for kids. There are three installments, the first being an introduction to what Sustainable Table calls "the dark side of the meat industry," and the second and third, The Meatrix II: The Revolting, and The Meatrix II 1/2, which explores new avenues into the dairy and meat-packing industries.

Our pig protagonist, Leo, chooses the red pill, and follows Mootheus, a trench coat-wearing cow, who reveals the grim reality about most of America's meat and dairy products. As they walk around the farm and Mootheus explains how animals are packed into tight-knit quarters and injected with RBGH and fed the carcasses of their relatives, the juxtaposition of the simplistic, brightly-colored cartoons against the shocking statistics helps to drive the point home.

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