10 replies to this topic

[WreckWench]

Concerns Beef Up Over Treated Meat

By MARIAN BURROS, The New York Times


These steaks were red when bought and refrigerated. They were photographed again 13 days later. The top one, however, was treated with carbon monoxide. Click here to see the difference!


Watch Video: Click here to see the video
Red Doesn't Always Mean Fresh
Talk About It: The Buzz
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(Feb. 21) - If some of the meat in supermarkets is looking rosier than it used to, the reason is that a growing number of markets are selling it in airtight packages treated with a touch of carbon monoxide to help the product stay red for weeks.

This form of "modified atmosphere packaging," a technique in which other gases replace oxygen, has become more widely used as supermarkets eliminate their butchers and buy precut, "case-ready" meat from processing plants.

The reason for its popularity in the industry is clear. One study, conducted at Oklahoma State University for the Cattlemen's Beef Board in 2003, said retailers lost at least $1 billion a year as meat turned brown from exposure to oxygen, because, though it might still be fairly fresh and perfectly safe, consumers simply judged meat's freshness by its color.

Click here to read the entire story!

[ScubaGypsy]

There is an easy answer for this.................eat more seafood!

[cmt489]

IMO, this is just the tip of the iceberg with meat safety and issues in North America. The EU has done studies that have led them to believe that all the hormones fed to the animals to make them gain maximum weight also has a detrimental effect on consumers. Some questions whether hormones fed to beef increase the chances of breast cancer in women. I was also reading an article recently (from Europe) where they advised that those eating chicken as a healthier alternative were actually doing themselves more harm than good if the chicken was not organic given all the hormones that they ingest before slaughter. Plus, that red stead, so red because it is dyed to be that colour. Aged beef is NOT red but, of course, most people would be put off by the true colour of aged beef.

Choose your food carefully. My approach is, whenever possible, to buy organic for health and environmental reasons as the organic meat, eggs and dairy, by law, can contain no artificial growth hormones.

[annasea]

If anyone is looking for some insight into the cattle industry, two very engrossing, informative reads are:

Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation and Howard Lyman's Mad Cowboy

[celticsiren]

My choice is no meat whenever possible. Also beware of Organic, the U.S. laws are pretty slack about regulating the organic food industry and current proposed legislation would make it easier for non-organic producers to label their items as organic as they see fit. I prefer to stick with local produce when I can.

[ddierolf]

With all the cows around here, it is just so easy when you get hungry to stop along the road of some farm and take a bite out of one standing along the fence, cant get more fresh then that! Oh i did forget to say, it is hard to get them to stand still enough for the bbq sauce though! :-P

[Brinybay]

A steak wouldn't last 13hrs in my place, let alone 13 days. Who leaves meat in the fridge that long? Of course it's going to look gross after almost 2 weeks, just about anything would.

[blacktar]

Just so you know. They have been gas packing meat for atleast ten years from the beef packer to the retailer. When we get a piece of beef it is an almost green color. It doesn't bloom (turn red) untill oxygen hits it. That it why when you look at the back of the ground beef in the package it is dark. It hasn't been in contact with oxygen. Then new thing now is irradiated meat. They use a small amount of radiation to kill all the bacteria in meat thus producing a safer, and longer lasting product. If you really have concerns. Talk to your butcher. Don't accuse him, just ask him about the meat you are getting. One of my past employees had been a butcher for so long he still remembered having sawdust on the floor and cutting hanging quaters. Trust me. It is a lot better now.
Patrick

[Brinybay]

More info on the carbon-monoxide treated beef:

No Beef in Meat Packaging Controversy
Monday, March 06, 2006
By Steven Milloy

Yet another potential food scare is being manufactured out of thin air --- or rather out of carbon monoxide.

Last November, with little fanfare, Michigan-based Kalsec, Inc. petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to ban the use of carbon monoxide-based processes in meat packaging. Kalsec, the maker of a rival meat packaging technology, claims that the use of carbon monoxide in meat packaging is unsafe and could lead to the consumption of spoiled meat that appears safe upon visual inspection.

Kalsec’s petition exploded into a major media frenzy last week after the Washington Post reported (Feb. 20) that meat packagers have “quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide in order to give meat a bright pink color that lasts weeks.”

The industry’s motivation, according to the Post, is to save “much of the $1 billion it says it loses annually from having to discount or discard meat that is reasonably fresh and perfectly safe, but no longer pretty.”

Politicians, especially those from Kalsec’s home state, and anti-meat activists have joined in the fray calling on the FDA to ban the use of the carbon monoxide-based packaging process.

Not unlike sliced apples, the color of red meat can change rapidly. The meat starts out purplish in color. Immediately after slicing and exposure to air, it turns red. Continued exposure to air can turn it brown and even grayish – all the while remaining perfectly safe to eat.

But consumers tend to prefer beef that appears red in color. So the industry developed what are known as “modified atmosphere packaging” (MAP) technologies which replace the air in meat packaging with various combinations of gases that retard the discoloration process.

MAP technologies don’t “add” color to meat. They don’t modify bacterial growth and don’t mask spoilage. They simply form a more stable color and avoid premature browning of meat due to oxygenation.

There are no reports of consumers inadvertently eating spoiled meat that had been MAP-treated and becoming sick. This is not surprising since all carbon monoxide-packaged meats display use-by dates. While it’s possible that packaged meat may spoil before the use-by-date if not stored at the proper temperature, consumers would be alerted to such spoilage by bulging packaging, or a strong odor and slimy texture.

Contrary to the implication of the Post report, the meat packaging industry has not “quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide.” The practice is, in fact, more than 20 years old. It was hailed as a “success,” for example, in a December 1984 article in the Financial Times (UK) and as “hi-tech” in a December 1985 Fortune article.

The Food and Drug Administration first approved a carbon monoxide-based MAP technology in February 2002. Meat packagers and processors have since increasingly begun using the technology, displacing previously used high-oxygen MAP systems, such as those sold by Kalsec.

“It is a calculated move to discredit a competing technology,” said the American meat Institute’s J. Patrick Boyle in a press release. “Carbon monoxide-based systems stand to make obsolete Kalsec’s product. That’s what this entire petition and accompanying media campaign are all about,” added Boyle.

What appears to have driven Kalsec to the desperation of petitioning the FDA to have carbon monoxide-based MAP declared unsafe is the FDA’s approval on Sept. 29, 2005 of an application by Tyson Foods – a Kalsec customer – to have its carbon monoxide-based MAP process be given the GRAS or “generally recognized as safe” designation by FDA.

Activist groups are helping to whip up the frenzy about carbon monoxide-packaged meat simply because it dovetails nicely with their long-standing agendas. Long-time beef scare-mongering groups like Safe Tables Our Priority (STOP) and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) are joining in the fray, attempting to position the controversy as a “consumer’s right-to-know” issue – or at least that’s what STOP told the Washington Post. But STOP’s sincerity can be rightly questioned since, rather than calling for labeling, it joined the CFA and Kalsec in January in asking the FDA for an outright ban on carbon monoxide-based MAP.

No doubt fundraising is tougher these days for groups like STOP that rely on outbreaks of food-borne illness to garner media attention – 2005 was a non-event food poisoning-wise.

“One of the major topics conspicuous by its absence in 2005 was news coverage dealing with food safety issues. There were no major outbreaks of food-borne illness,” reported the International Food Information Council. Moreover, the prevalence of food pathogens in meat, like E. coli 0157:H7, listeria monocytogenes, salmonella are steadily declining, according to data from the American Meat Institute.

It’s too bad we can’t say the same for junk science-based scaremongering.

Steven Milloy publishes JunkScience.com and CSRWatch.com. He is a junk science expert, an advocate of free enterprise and an adjunct scholar at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

[Bubble2Bubble]

Thanks Everyone for Contributing to this thread!
It made for a Great Read on a thursday night.

looking back in my shopping history I have never seen anything other than red beef for sale in the meat dept ???

But as a general rule I use the smell method for beef, seafood and dairy.

ddierolf and I share the same story.
the meat market I shop at there are 1/2 beefs hanging in a walk-in frigirator and the butcher is always chopping on something and in Displays there is plenty of red beef. I dont think there is time to put Dye or carbon-monoxide on it??

maybe this thread is about the practises of Major Grocery Chains.


B2B

[Brinybay]

I'm not so much concerned about the safety of meat as I am the cost. That by itself is enough to make me want to quit buying it. Almost. I just can't cook. I can make a tasty burger, but I don't have a clue how to make a tasty vegetable dish unless it's something I can nuke in the microwave. Even then, many of the frozen prepared stuff with the added crap (like cheese and other sauces) is too high in salt and calories.