The Next Bad Beef Scandal?
Cattle feed now contains things like chicken manure and dead cats
It was about as exciting as things get in quiet Columbus, Neb. Last week, just a few days after their arrival, a SWAT team of agricultural inspectors forced the closing of the town's Hudson Foods Co. plant, declaring that a jumbled record system and questionable procedures made it difficult, if not impossible, to determine how E. coli bacteria had tainted the hamburger patties fashioned there. The bad meat, the inspectors found, came from one of seven slaughterhouses that supplied Hudson on June 5. Just which one wasn't immediately clear. Hudson recalled 25 million pounds of its meat, and Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman offered assurances that the plant would not open until "far more stringent safety standards" had been adopted. "All evidence at this point," he added, "indicates that we have contained the outbreak."
Glickman's declaration may have been a tad premature. The true extent of the Hudson hamburger contamination will remain a mystery until inspectors know exactly which plants supplied the beef. From there, they will have to investigate further to determine if Hudson's suppliers also sent bad meat to other food companies. What is indisputable, however, is that the problems at Hudson represent only one of many threats to the nation's meat supply.
Bargain breakfast. Agriculture experts say a slew of new and questionable methods of fattening cattle are being employed by farmers. To trim costs, many farmers add a variety of waste substances to their livestock and poultry feed and no one is making sure they are doing so safely. Chicken manure in particular, which costs from $15 to $45 a ton in comparison with up to $125 a ton for alfalfa, is increasingly used as feed by cattle farmers despite possible health risks to consumers. In regions with large poultry operations, such as California, the South, and the mid-Atlantic, more and more farmers are turning to chicken manure as a cheaper alternative to grains and hay.
Lamar Carter is one such cattle farmer. Carter recently purchased 745 tons of litter scooped from the floors of local chicken houses, stacking it 12 feet high on his farm near Dardanelle, Ark. After allowing the protein-rich excrement to heat up for seven to 10 days, Carter mixes it with smaller amounts of soybean bran, and feeds this fecal slumgullion to his 800 head of cattle. "My cows are fat as butterballs," Carter says. "If I didn't have chicken litter, I'd have to sell half my herd. Other feed's too expensive."
Health officials are not as enthusiastic. Chicken manure often contains campylobacter and salmonella bacteria, which can cause disease in humans, as wellas intestinal parasites, veterinary drug residues, and toxic heavy metals such as arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury. These bacteria and toxins are passed on to the cattle and can be cycled to humans who eat beef contaminated by feces during slaughter. A scientific paper scheduled for publication this fall in the journal Preventive Medicine points to the potential dangers of recycling chicken waste to cattle. "Feeding manure that has not been properly processed is supercharging the cattle feces with pathogens likely to cause disease in consumers," says Dr. Neal Barnard, head of the Washington, D.C. based health lobby Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, an author of the article.
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