Beef Recall – Looks Like Oprah Was Right!
If the largest beef recall in history, 143 million pounds of beef products, seems like another "GroundHog Day" to you, you're not alone. In typical fashion, we can expect to see lots of finger pointing and looking for the usual suspects to blame instead of fixing a festering, systemic problem in our food supply. Looks like not much has changed – except now everybody knows "Happy Cows" are hard to find in California. Wisconsin is looking better and better.
In 1996, cattlemen and cows were both mad and consumers were justifiably freaked out. They always assumed "somebody" was accountable insuring a safe food supply. It turns out there's a lot of deliberate misinformation from industry stakeholders and recipients of our federal agricultural subsidies.
Food and Water Watch has filed two of the nineteen Freedom Of Information Act requests related to meat inspections, and those were just from June 2007.
The Center For Individual Freedom was quick to jump on PETA for their lawsuit to remove the "Happy Cows" ads from the air, arguing they were fraudulent and misleading. Watch the videos and decide for yourself. Fair warning, who you are could be altered forever.
Once we get reconnected to nature and to our food, we'll begin making healthier choices. Once enough of us begin doing that – getting smart and making healthy choices – the marketplace will shift. Our expectations will rise and as a result, we'll begin feeling better about ourselves, and just maybe about our cows.
Check out Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemna and In Defense Of Food.
Both are incredible eye openers and indispensable for those looking for a way through the maze of misinformation. It's no wonder we're confused. Food was never supposed to be this complicated.
The fix is in. In the immortal words of Animal House's Dean Vernon Womer: "Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son."
