McDonalds Finally Removes Pink Slime From Hamburgers

April 10, 2012

Natural News

By Alexander Frantzis

“Before you give McDonald’s praise for this decision, remember, the only reason they pulled pink slime from their burgers is because the public caught on. They care nothing about the ‘food’ they serve or the health of the people who eat it. Never eat fast food – ever.” –KTRN

Following years of hard-hitting journalism highlighting the adulteration of hamburger meat with ammonia, McDonalds recently announced it had at last stopped doing so late last year.

Numerous activists including celebrity chef Oliver Stone, and health ranger Mike Adams had spoken out against the practice. By sanitizing discarded disease ridden meat with ammonium hydroxide (also used in glass cleaners, explosives and fertilizers) inedible meat can reenter the marketplace.

In Stone’s own words “Basically we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest form for dogs and making it ‘fit’ for humans.”

Due to the widespread unsanitary conditions within the meat industry, preventing severe bacterial contamination of meats is nearly impossible, especially for any discarded scraps. Food poisoning during bacterial outbreaks is the most visible symptom of this problem, and in turn the sole focus.

To quote Adams: “This is all fine with the USDA, which endorses the procedure as a way to make the hamburger beef “safe” enough to eat. Ammonia kills e.coli, you see, and the USDA doesn’t seem to be concerned with the fact that people are eating ammonia in their hamburgers.”

Ammonium Hydroxide’s questionable safety
To address this conundrum, the USDA has classified ammonium hydroxide as “generally regarded as safe,” meaning, like GMOs, its assumed lack of toxicity is not up for debate. A cursory Google search however shows otherwise, listing issues including permanent eye damage, carcinogenic properties and increasing the size of hormonally sensitive organs .

McDonalds however was quick to distance themselves from any negative PR prompting their decision, simply stating, “At the beginning of 2011, we made a decision to discontinue the use of ammonia-treated beef in our hamburgers. This product has been out of our supply chain since August of last year. This decision was a result of our efforts to align our global standards for how we source beef around the world.”

Click here for the full report.

‘Pink Slime’ Is Now Found In 70 Percent Of The Ground Beef At Our Grocers

April 4, 2012

Natural News

By Tony Isaacs

“Solution – stop eating beef. Or if you must, grind up your own organic grass fed steak for ground beef.” –KTRN

Would you knowingly eat ground beef which contained scrap meat items such as muscle connective tissue which had been sprayed with ammonium hydroxide? Would you want your children to eat such ground beef in their school lunches? According to recent revelations, if you or your children eat ground beef there is a strong chance that both may be happening.

Last week, former United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) scientist-turned-whistleblower Gerald Zirnstein revealed that 70 percent of the ground beef sold at supermarkets contained the fake-meat additive which is commonly referred to as “pink slime”. This revelation came on the heels of reports that the USDA is purchasing 7 million pounds of the product for school lunches in public schools.

“Pink slime” is taking over ground beef at our grocers and schools
“Pink slime” is made by gathering beef waste trimmings, simmering them at low heat to make it easy to separate fat from the muscle, and using a centrifuge to spin the waste trimmings to complete the separation. Next, the mixture is sent through pipes and sprayed with ammonium hydroxide gas to kill bacteria. Finally, the product is packaged into bricks, frozen and shipped to grocery stores and meat packers, where it is added to most ground beef.

The beef trimmings are particularly susceptible to contamination and were once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. However, Beef Products Inc. (BPI), the makers of “pink slime, commissioned a study which reportedly demonstrated that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella. Ever since the study, use of “pink slime” in ground beef has increased.

In 2009, the New York Times reported that despite the added ammonia, tests of “pink slime” across the country revealed dozens of instances of E. coli and salmonella. According to the Times, E. coli was found three times and salmonella 48 times between 2005 and 2009, including two contaminated batches of meat totaling 27,000 pounds.

Zirnstein, who first coined the term “pink slime” in a USDA memo, told ABC news “It’s economic fraud. It’s not fresh ground beef. …It’s a cheap substitute being added in.”

Click here for the full report.

‘Pink Slime’ (Beef Parts Paste With Ammonia) Good For Kids, Says Beef Products, Inc

March 19, 2012

Natural News

By Scott Morefield

“Of course Beef Products Inc. would say pink slime is healthy – they sell it.” –KTRN

In perhaps the most amazing display of unmitigated gall since the Journal of Pediatrics declared mercury ‘good for kids,’ (1) Beef Products Inc. (BPI) told The Daily that its “lean finely textured beef,” treated with ammonia, is good for America’s schoolchildren. Last week The Daily broke the news that the federal government plans to buy beef containing over 7 million pounds of ‘pink slime’ over the next year.

“Including LFTB in the national school lunch program’s beef products accomplishes three important goals on behalf of 32 million kids,” BPI spokesman Rich Jochum told The Daily. “It 1) improves the nutritional profile, 2) increases the safety of the products and 3) meets the budget parameters that allow the school lunch program to feed kids nationwide every day.” (2)

So what’s the real reason?
With their first and second stated reasons being patently absurd, it really just comes down to the third, the almighty dollar. By adding the beef fat and trimmings, known to contain higher levels of E. Coli, salmonella, and other pathogens, then adding ammonia to kill said pathogens, they are able to save 3 cents off the cost of making a pound of beef. (2)

So by adding ammonia to a product that was previously only sold to dog food and cooking oil suppliers, (3) BPI is able to decrease their costs by mixing it with beef and feeding it to children.

Want to vote with your wallet and forgo the ‘pink slime’ infested meat? It might be difficult. Janet Riley, senior vice president of public affairs for the American Meat Institute recently made her case against labeling, telling ABC News, “What you are asking me to put on the label, its beef, it’s on the label, it’s a beef product, it’s says beef so we are declaring … it’s beef.” (3)

By Ms. Riley’s logic, dog food is ‘beef’ too. Perhaps she is using the same standards McDonalds uses when it calls its chicken nuggets ‘chicken.’ (4)

Click here for the full report.

Pink Slime: It’s What’s for Lunch in America’s Schools

March 6, 2012

Take Part

By Megan Bedard

“If you have kids, they should never be buying school lunches. Brown bag it and give them healthy food.” –KTRN

Forget the corn dog and pizza quarrels. Healthy school lunch advocates have a bigger problem on their plates: a 7 million-pound order of connective tissue and beef scraps doused in ammonia, set to hit school lunch trays in coming months.

Despite being dropped in December by McDonald’s, Taco Bell, and Burger King, the infamous concoction—known as “pink slime”—is still in high demand, thanks to a U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) purchase that will keep it on school lunch menus. Yes, keep; it’s been there for years and is set to stay.

The substance is smooshed into meat patties and served up as hamburgers, but the meat product is made from parts of cows “normally destined for dog food and rendering,” reports The Daily.

Microbiologist Gerald Zirnstein and retired microbiologist Carl Custer say the goop is “a high risk product.” The two conducted a study on pink slime in the late ’90s, when JoAnn Smith—known for being buddy-buddy with the beef industry—was serving as undersecretary for the George H.W. Bush administration. (Smith was president of both the Florida Cattlemen’s Association and the National Cattlemen’s Association). At the time, Custer sounded the alarms for food-safety concerns, but the USDA ignored his warnings, Custer says, soliciting a second assessment of the slime’s safety.

Because the meat scraps are particularly vulnerable to contamination, South Dakota company Beef Products, Inc. came up with the idea to soak the stuff in ammonia to kill E. coli and salmonella in 2001. The USDA stamped it with approval and shortly thereafter, the slime was available for public consumption.

Click here for the full report.

Pasteurized Milk 150 Times More Contaminated With Blood, Pus And Feces Than Fresh Milk

February 22, 2012

Natural News

By: Mike Adams

The vaccine-pushing, disease scare-mongering agency known as the CDC has put out a stunning piece of propaganda attacking fresh milk (raw dairy), claiming it is “150 times more dangerous” than pasteurized milk. This is all part of their anti-American agenda to crush food freedom and criminalize fundamental farming practices upon which this very nation was founded. (Yes, George Washington and the founding fathers drank raw milk, grew hemp and even smoked a little weed as medicine.)

But what the CDC won’t dare reveal to the public is the far more horrifying truth: Pasteurized dairy is produced in the dirtiest milk factories imaginable, where blood, pus, e.coli and other truly dangerous pathogens are routinely bottled into milk containers and fed to consumers.

That’s the whole point of pasteurization, you see: To kill everything that might be alive in their ultra-dirty milk. The real purpose of pasteurization is not to simply “make milk safe” as is claimed by the CDC, but rather to allow the dairy industry to operate DIRTY. It’s so much easier to just cook the crap out of the milk (yes, there’s fecal matter in it) than to clean up their operations, get it?

Thanks to pasteurization, conventional (non-organic, non-raw) dairy operators have no need to thoroughly wash their milking machines, no need to sterilize any milk containers, no need to wash their hands, and no need to maintain a clean milking environment whatsoever. It’s just total filth with festering diseased animals dying on the floor and being physically abused by the corporate dairy operators (see video links, below).

Dairy cows are routinely abused and left to suffer in total filth

Want to know how conventional (pasteurized) dairy cows are really treated? Here’s something the CDC won’t show you.

Watch this highly disturbing video of dairy cows being kicked, tortured, abused and injured by conventional dairy workers. This was filmed with an undercover spy cam (WARNING: DISTURBING IMAGERY):

When you buy pasteurized milk at the grocery store, you are supporting an industry that tortures cows and produces a dirty, filthy product!

Of course, the dairy industry would much rather force everybody to pasteurize their milk and outlaw clean raw dairy than to clean up their own act. That’s the whole point of the CDC going after raw dairy: To destroy the raw dairy industry and force everyone to drink dirty, contaminated pasteurized milk that’s extracted from tortured cows.

Here are some other short videos you may want to view (WARNING):

Dairy Cow Abuse – “Mercy For Animals” hidden camera in New York:

The disgusting treatment of (conventional) dairy cows:

Dairy cows with injuries and infections:

ABC Nightline – Dairy farm abuse:

So get it through your heads, folks: If you buy pasteurized, homogenized milk, you are supporting an industry of filth, torture, infected animals and dirty, dirty milk.

Blood, pus, bacteria and fecal matter – drink up, kiddies!

The reason all that milk has to be pasteurized is because it’s strongly contaminated with:

• blood
• pus
• bacteria
• fecal matter

In addition, conventional dairy cows are:

• Pumped full of bovine growth hormones
• Fed masses of antibiotics
• Fed tons of GMOs such as corn and soy
• Heavily contaminated with chemical pesticides

That’s what you get when you buy “Pasteurized” milk. Plus the feces in the milk, of course.

So the next time somebody gets mad at you in bumper-to-bumper traffic and they scream out the window: “EAT SH*T!” just hand them a glass of pasteurized milk. Let them drink it, huh?

The cleanest milk in the world? RAW, fresh milk!

You want to see a super clean dairy operation? Go to a raw dairy farm and check out their operation. It’s the cleanest, most pristine dairy operation you’ll ever find. And why? Because it has to be. If you want to produce clean, fresh dairy without pasteurization, you have to run a super clean facility with healthy cows, stringent cleanliness practices and a commitment to producing wholesome food.

Only raw milk dairies have this kind of commitment to cleanliness.

View this powerful comparison between pasteurized milk and raw milk:

http://organicpastures.com/whyraw.html

In fact, if you took a gallon of unpasteurized milk from a conventional dairy and you compared it to a gallon of unpasteurized milk from a quality-certified raw milk dairy, I have no doubt you would find that the conventional dairy has at least 150 times the level of blood, pus, feces and dangerous bacteria (if not more).

Click here for the full report

Scientists Fear Antibiotics Are Perpetuating Diseases Impossible To Treat

February 21, 2012

Activist Post

By Mike Barrett

“So many people think antibiotics cure disease. Little do they know that they wreak havoc on your digestive system – giving you a candida yeast overgrowth. You don’t need antibiotics. You don’t need any pharmaceutical drug – ever.” –KTRN

Antibiotics, like many other drugs, are handed out by doctors as an end-all solution pill. Even for viral ailments doctors irresponsibly prescribe these pills as a solution.

Unfortunately, with all of the over-prescriptions and even necessary prescriptions, antibiotics have routinely been creating drug-resistant bacteria.

Britain now seems to be facing their own massive increase in antibiotic-resistant blood poisoning caused by escherichia coli (E. coli).

Bugs and bacteria rapidly adapt to survive, only taking months for the genetic mutations to occur. Antibiotics, although successful in wiping out most of the bacterial invaders, don’t kill absolutely all of them. Over time the bacteria which survive the antibiotics become resistant, and continue to reproduce, only now with a quirk in their genetic structure allowing them to survive.

The slow but problematic growth of resistant organisms is resulting in antibiotics being nearly useless.

The Independent reports:

Using standard antibiotic regimens, there is a one in 10 chance that treatment of an E.coli infection will fail because the bug is resistant. But, as numbers of resistant infections rise, there will be increasing pressure to use more powerful antibiotics, called carbapenems, which are the last line available. And resistance to those is already emerging…The warnings follow increasing reports from Europe of patients with infections that are almost impossible to treat.

Click here for the full report.

Rise In Resistant Bacteria Could Make Some Diseases Impossible To Treat

February 20, 2012

The Independent

By Jeremy Laurence

Britain is facing a “massive” rise in antibiotic-resistant blood poisoning caused by the bacterium E.coli – bringing closer the spectre of diseases that are impossible to treat.

Experts say the growth of antibiotic resistance now poses as great a threat to global health as the emergence of new diseases such as Aids and pandemic flu.

Professor Peter Hawkey, a clinical microbiologist and chair of the Government’s antibiotic-resistance working group, said that antibiotic resistance had become medicine’s equivalent of climate change.

The “slow but insidious growth” of resistant organisms was threatening to turn common infections into untreatable diseases, he said. Already, an estimated 25,000 people die each year in the European Union from antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections.

“It is a worldwide issue – there are no boundaries,” he said. “We have very good policies on the use of antibiotics in man and in animals in the UK. But we are not alone. We have to think globally.” Between 2005 and 2009 the incidence of E.coli “bacteraemias” [the presence of bacteria in the blood] rose by 30 per cent, from 18,000 to over 25,000 cases. Those resistant to antibiotics have risen from 1 per cent at the beginning of the century to 10 per cent.

“Only one in 20 of infections with [resistant] E.coli is a bacteraemia, so the above data are only the tip of an iceberg of infected individuals,” says a report produced by Professor Hawkey’s group, commissioned by the Department of Health and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Dame Sally Davies, the Government’s chief medical officer, has pledged £500,000 to fund research into the threat. Drug companies have lost interest in developing new antibiotics because it is increasingly difficult to find new agents and it is not commercially viable – antibiotics are taken for a few days, compared with, say, a heart drug which may be taken for life.

“There are only so many antibiotics available and as we lose them it becomes more and more difficult to replace them,” Professor Hawkey said.

The rapid rise in E.coli blood poisoning is thought to be linked with the ageing of the population. E.coli is a common cause of urinary-tract infections but may also cause wound infections following surgery or injury. These are regarded as minor conditions, but if they became untreatable they would be life-threatening.

Click here for the full report from The Independent.

What’s Really In That Burger?

December 9, 2011

Natural News

By Mike Adams

“If you are going to eat hamburgers, it MUST come from grass-fed cows. Best is to grind up the meat yourself so you know it’s not a mixture of dozens of different cows. But your best option is to eat a garden burger instead.” –KTRN

There are 14 billion hamburgers consumed each year in the United States alone. The people who eat those burgers, though, have little knowledge of what’s actually in them. Current USDA regulations, for example, openly allow beef contaminated with E. coli to be repackaged, cooked and sold as ready-to-eat hamburgers.

This simple fact would shock most consumers if they knew about it. People assume that beef found to be contaminated with E. coli must be thrown out or destroyed (or even recalled), but in reality, it’s often just pressed into hamburger patties, cooked, and sold to consumers. This practice is openly endorsed by the USDA.

But E. coli may not be the worst thing in your burger: USDA regulations also allow chicken feces to be used as feed for cows, meaning your hamburger beef may be made of second-hand chicken poop, recycled through the stomachs of cows.

Chicken poop in your burgers?
I remember writing about this two years ago. People sent accusatory hate mails to NaturalNews, saying things like, “Stop making things up and scaring people!” Few people believed that chicken feces was being widely used as cattle feed.

According to the FDA, farmers feed their cattle anywhere from 1 million to 2 million tons of chicken feces each year. This cross-species crap-as-food practice worries critics who are concerned it may lead to increased risk of mad cow disease contaminating beef products. So they want to ban the practice and disallow the feeding of chicken litter to cows.

Believe it or not, McDonald’s has joined the fight seeking to ban the practice, saying “We do not condone the feeding of poultry litter to cattle.” Apparently, even they don’t want their customers looking at a Big Mac and thinking, “Wow, this is made out of second-hand chicken crap.”

Click here for the full report.

Ground Beef Recalled Due to E. Coli Contamination

August 16th, 2011

AboutLawsuits.com

More than 60,000 pounds of ground beef from the National Beef Packing Co. has been recalled because of the risk of E. coli food poisoning.

The ground beef recall was announced on August 12 by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) after Ohio health department inspectors found contamination by E. coli O157:H7 during a routine inspection of one of National Beef Packing Co.’s products. There have been no food poisoning reports linked to the contaminated beef.

The recall affects 60,424 pounds of National Beef ground beef chubs produced on July 23, 2011, with a Freeze by Date of August 12, 2011, and ground beef chubs produced on July 25, 2011 with a Freeze by Date of August 14, 2011. All of the affected beef has an establishment number “Est. 262″ in the USDA mark of inspection.

A full list of products affected by the recall is available in the FSIS recall notice. The FSIS has also provided a full retail distribution list (pdf). The meat was shipped to Kroger, Sam’s Club, Wal-Mart, Winn Dixe and Publix stores nationwide. The FSIS warns that the ground beef may have been repackaged for sale to consumers.

E. coli O157:H7 is one of the more common causes of food poisoning in the United States. When left untreated, it can lead to dehydration and potentially life-threatening illness. While most healthy adults recover from food poisoning caused by E. coli within a few weeks, young children and the elderly could be at risk for more severe illness. If the toxin enters the blood stream, E. coli could also lead to kidney failure known as Hemolytic-Urenia Syndrome (HUS).

Consumers with questions can contact the company by calling (816)713-8631.

Click here for the full report from AboutLawsuits.com

Stop The Madness!

July 11, 2011

Dr. Mercola

Mercola.com

As of July 1, the recent outbreak of E. coli in Germany, linked to contaminated sprouts, has caused at least 49 deaths and more than 4,100 illnesses in the European Union, and has once again highlighted immense problems with food safety.

The E. coli bacteria strain, O104:H4, found in the sprouts eaten by all of those who became ill was unusually deadly. A Lancet study reasoned this was due to the bacteria’s ability to release Shiga toxin, which can cause hemolytic-uremic syndrome (HUS) leading to kidney failure and death, as well as its ability to stick to intestinal cells. But another factor involved was the fact that the E. coli was resistant to most antibiotics.

This is certainly not a problem unique to Germany. In fact, in the United States the excessive use of antibiotics in food production has lead to the creation of a new generation of hard-to-eradicate human diseases.

Why is the United States a Prime Breeding Ground for Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria?

The New York Times reported this really shocking statistic, the state of North Carolina uses more antibiotics for livestock production than the entire United States uses for humans.  Chickens, cattle and hogs are fed antibiotics not on a case-specific basis to treat disease, but indiscriminately to make them grow faster — which increases profit margins for livestock producers — and prevent disease from teeming in filthy conditions. Industrial farmers literally add antibiotics to livestock’s food and water, so they are all medicated.

What’s wrong with this picture?

Click here to read the full report from Dr. Mercola.

 

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