You know, you go along shopping in stores that seem to show good practices when handling food, coolers are the right temperature, out-of-date food is taken out of the coolers and off of the shelves in a timely fashion. You cook your foods the way they're supposed to be cooked, and you make sure your meat is handled well, your hands are washed, and you cook to high enough temperatures.

And then you read an article like this and realize you have to start from scratch in thinking again if you want to eat meat at all, what cuts of meat, or how much more you need to do more in the processing yourself.

From this very long article, I will excerpt this portion:

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.

Ms. Smith's reaction to the virulent strain of E. coli was extreme, but tracing the story of her burger, through interviews and government and corporate records obtained by The New York Times, shows why eating ground beef is still a gamble. Neither the system meant to make the meat safe, nor the meat itself, is what consumers have been led to believe.

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled "American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties." Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows. Yet Cargill, like most meat companies, relies on its suppliers to check for the bacteria and does its own testing only after the ingredients are ground together. The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way of increasing the chance of finding contamination.

It's as big a crap shoot as it was when Upton Sinclair was writing about meatpackers 100 years ago. You can't keep track of everything going on in the world, you have to make choices when you shop and choose food. I've just pulled out my food grinder that fits on my Kitchenaid mixer, and I'll be grinding my own chopped meat from now on. And probably making my own sausage.

In 2009 the USDA is still only SUGGESTING to these companies? I hope this articles gets a few asses kicked, both the companies and the elected representatives who turn a blind eye when they have their hands out for campaign contributions.

SRS