mixed bag
There are horror stories being told about ground beef. Many of them - like the myths(or truths) about hot dogs - revolve around the fact that no one really knows what’s in ground beef. While it may or may not be true that ground beef is really hooves and lips, there are real reasons to be suspicious of the product. An October, 2009 article in the New York Times reported on an outbreak of E. coli in the U.S. that had been linked to tainted ground beef. It seems that you really don’t know what’s in that little pink hillock in your freezer, and more importantly, you have no idea where the “meat” came from.
So what does this have to do with milk? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you have no way of knowing where your milk comes from, either. In an earlier blog posting, we have a link to a website that allows you to use the source code on the dairy products you buy to find out where it was processed. But that link only allows you to see where the milk in your gallon of skim was bottled, not the farm where the milk originated. The truth is that the milk in your refrigerator probably came from many different farms - hundreds in fact. The major milk distributors in New York City have contracts with anywhere from 200 to 500 dairy farms, and they mix the milk together in huge vats before bottling. It is actually not possible for you to trace your milk back to the cow. Not even the distributor can do that.
“But it’s all milk, what’s the big deal?” First of all, I’d encourage you to read the New York Times article linked at the beginning of this entry, because it will do a much better job of arguing my case. I’ll do my best in the mean time. The tainted meat linked to the 2007 E. coli outbreak was mixed together form many different sources that came from multiple countries. That made it very difficult to locate the source of the outbreak, leading to more potential cases of E. coli, and a much larger recall of ground meat. Not to mention the fact that a great many consumers would likely be wary of buying a pound of ground beef that was advertised to be from Uruguay, Bolivia, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. And yet we buy a gallon of milk that comes from 500 farms once a week.
Alright. I should make a disclaimer here: milk is pasteurized. That means they heat up the raw milk to the point where all the harmful bacteria are killed. So before anyone reading this starts to panic about getting E. coli from their breakfast cereal, take a deep breath - it’s highly unlikely. But to my way of thinking, that almost makes it worse. Since milk is mixed together from hundreds of sources, you have no way of knowing what type of farm produced it, or what the quality of the raw milk was. But the pasteurization process masks these issues in a superficially healthy product.
We need to lobby for better bottling and labeling practices. Stay tuned to the blog for suggested actions. That glass of milk you had with breakfast might not kill you, but is that all that matters?
mixed bag
There are horror stories being told about ground beef. Many of them - like the myths(or truths) about hot dogs - revolve around the fact that no one really knows what’s in ground beef. While it may or may not be true that ground beef is really hooves and lips, there are real reasons to be suspicious of the product. An October, 2009 article in the New York Times reported on an outbreak of E. coli in the U.S. that had been linked to tainted ground beef. It seems that you really don’t know what’s in that little pink hillock in your freezer, and more importantly, you have no idea where the “meat” came from.
So what does this have to do with milk? Well, I hate to tell you this, but you have no way of knowing where your milk comes from, either. In an earlier blog posting, we have a link to a website that allows you to use the source code on the dairy products you buy to find out where it was processed. But that link only allows you to see where the milk in your gallon of skim was bottled, not the farm where the milk originated. The truth is that the milk in your refrigerator probably came from many different farms - hundreds in fact. The major milk distributors in New York City have contracts with anywhere from 200 to 500 dairy farms, and they mix the milk together in huge vats before bottling. It is actually not possible for you to trace your milk back to the cow. Not even the distributor can do that.
“But it’s all milk, what’s the big deal?” First of all, I’d encourage you to read the New York Times article linked at the beginning of this entry, because it will do a much better job of arguing my case. I’ll do my best in the mean time. The tainted meat linked to the 2007 E. coli outbreak was mixed together form many different sources that came from multiple countries. That made it very difficult to locate the source of the outbreak, leading to more potential cases of E. coli, and a much larger recall of ground meat. Not to mention the fact that a great many consumers would likely be wary of buying a pound of ground beef that was advertised to be from Uruguay, Bolivia, Nebraska, Kansas, and Iowa. And yet we buy a gallon of milk that comes from 500 farms once a week.
Alright. I should make a disclaimer here: milk is pasteurized. That means they heat up the raw milk to the point where all the harmful bacteria are killed. So before anyone reading this starts to panic about getting E. coli from their breakfast cereal, take a deep breath - it’s highly unlikely. But to my way of thinking, that almost makes it worse. Since milk is mixed together from hundreds of sources, you have no way of knowing what type of farm produced it, or what the quality of the raw milk was. But the pasteurization process masks these issues in a superficially healthy product.
We need to lobby for better bottling and labeling practices. Stay tuned to the blog for suggested actions. That glass of milk you had with breakfast might not kill you, but is that all that matters?
Posted 3 years ago 1 note View Larger Image
