Anyone else ever wonder what happens to recalled meat?

>> Another thing not discussed here is the fact that all this sterility demand is producing superbugs...

Gotta go along there. It's for sure a part of the problem and we see the effects in food and other areas. A lot of kids are being raised in near sterile environments and they grow up lacking resistance to everyday germs. Overuse of antibiotics seems to have yielded some tougher to beat variants of everyday germs, and some say overcleaning with antibacterial products is doing the same thing. But this all strays a bit from the original thread topic, so I hadn't mentioned it. I'm far from obsessive about cleanliness, it doesn't bother me to see little kids rolling around in the dirt with dogs and such, and my kitchen & bathroom (well, the whole house actually) get pretty nasty looking at times, and I'll occasionally eat a raw oyster or two out of Yaquina Bay, but my own bad experiences have tought me about the mishandling of commercial meats and I won't invite disaster.

I don't like the fact that cattle feed contains meat... it's kinda Soylent Green-ish

Ummmm... It's illegal to feed animals their own kind. And it's been that way in the US for a long time. The nearest thing to animal protein fed to cattle, is a product called "Feather Meal". Which is bird feathers that have been steamed, and ground. You and I probably could not eat feather meal. Cattle have the ability to eat and do well with lots of stuff we can't use directly. Almond hulls, rice polishing, stalks and stems of vegetables. The reason we eat cattle, is that we have kind of a symbiotic relatonship with cattle. We protect them, and feed them things we could not eat. This allows us to expand our range into areas where what we eat won't grow. The most important reason we eat cattle, and other ruminents, is that we evolved eating cattle and other ruminents.

The Brits kind of have this issue with public safety. Which goes back several hundred years. Seems that contractors transporting convicts to down-under, neglected to feed their charges Which helped in maximizing their profits. No one seems to have been charged. The British Navy had a few real nasty mutinies, not over sailors being kidnaped from bars, or beaten to death or anything you would think sailors would mutiny over. But the Mutinies were over the un-edible trash packed into barrels by contractors, and purchased by the Royal Navy for feeding Sailors at sea. Lots of Sailors were hanged, no one seems to have been charged with feeding trash to Sailors. These were the same people purchasing tainted meat (Hoof and Mouth) from infected countries, for the purpose of feeding Soldiers. Then selling the un-cooked scraps as animal feed in the UK. Again, no one seems to have been charged.

Cows and steers are the most inefficient beasts in converting forage to milk or meat.

That's the most incorrect thing I have ever heard. Cows are the most efficient beasts for the environment. Can you eat and do well on dry grass? Cows can. In the field where your food grows, are voles, mice, bugs, snakes, raptors allowed? NO! Where your food grows, the land is dozed level, weeds disked down, herbicides sprayed, pesticides sprayed, then turned back in when done. Cows on the other hand live in steep, rocky, arid lands of the US west. Right along-side deer, antelope, wild horses, etc.

That's total BS, a holstein cow weighs in about 1600 lbs. More than 10 times that of a human. But Cows have a 20 gallon stomach, and the mamary glands required to feed one or more 100 lb baby ruminents. Are cattle some kind of high tech mutant. Well if you consider selective breeding high tech, then yes. Are they somewhat inbred? Perhaps, but that leads to losses. And tends to be self limiting. Do cows receive strange hormone implants? Only for lactation, and that milk does not go to grade A (fresh milk). No other growth promoting chemicals are allowed.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.