Beef. . . Its What's For Dinner!

[TheDaVinciChode]

If Bionic Cow Santa approached me, as a child, I'd kick him in the balls, and run away, screaming "STRANGER DANGER!"

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by Shawnee123

Hobos: the other red meat.

Only Native American hobos. I'm the other, other white meat.

[TheDaVinciChode]

Originally Posted by Spexxvet

Only Native American hobos. I'm the other, other white meat.

I laughed.

Then I got hungry. (I didn't realise you were a baby? Props on the typing skills, and the extensive vocabulary.)

[lumberjim]

Originally Posted by TheDaVinciChode

(I didn't realise you were a baby?

you should see him carry on when someone takes his binky.

[HungLikeJesus]

For those concerned with antibiotics in meat, do you use anti-bacterial soap?

[jinx]

I don't choose it at the store, for my home, but I'm sure I use it elsewhere.

[squirell nutkin]

farto

[Clodfobble]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

If there weren't antibiotics in the beef, then THERE WOULD BE BIOTICS IN YOUR BEEF!

Do you want BIOTICS in your beef? I DON'T THINK SO!

Only because they also spend their time confined in close quarters, knee-deep in their own manure, and they eat a corn-based diet, which destroys their intestines and allows opportunistic infections to flourish. I believe the stat was that when you switch a cow to a grass diet (you know, like they evolved to eat,) 80% of the bad bacteria in their gut dies off within 3 weeks, but I'd have to go back to find the reference for that.

The funny thing is that when they compared the two, the ammonia-soaked (literally) chicken meat from the stacked-cage, windowless feed lot still had approximately 10 times the bacterial culture than the open-air, free-roaming chicken meat with no antimicrobial treatments at all.

[Aliantha]

I'd be interested to know where you got that information from Clod.

[Clodfobble]

Initially, an expose'-style documentary on the food processing industry called Food, Inc. I followed up on some of the references cited in the movie because Mr. Clod wasn't buying some of it, and they confirmed what was presented in the movie. It only specifically applies to factories they examined in the US, so it's possible your food safety laws are entirely different from ours.

[Aliantha]

Probably not all that much different, but I'll look into it anyway. We don't buy cage chicken meat or eggs in our house as the only way of protesting on a regular basis, but I'm surprised in particular that you've found there are no antibiotics in free range chicken. It's my understanding that they are still used even in free range, but I could be wrong.

[Clodfobble]

Antibiotics specifically are prohibited in all chicken in the US (though not in beef,) but ammonia is just a general antimicrobial, not considered an antibiotic.

[Aliantha]

Here is an exerpt from the Antibiotics Policy of the Australian Chicken Meat Industry

Antibiotics are substances that kill or inhibit the growth of bacteria and related microorganisms. They are essential substances in human and animal medicine.
This policy covers the use of antibiotics in two important ways:
�� therapeutic agents (ie applied to treat the clinical symptoms of a bacterial infection)
�� prophylactic agents (ie applied to healthy animals deemed to be at risk of infection to prevent disease occurring).
Importantly, no hormones are used in chicken meat production in Australia. The
industry position regarding the use of antibiotics is that antibiotics should only be used as a last resort to control disease in birds that cannot be managed by other means.

Much the same as the US I'm guessing from discussions I've seen on here.

Now to look into the beef industry and see what they say officially.

[squirell nutkin]

Not to burst anyone's balloon here about "free range" or "Cage Free" chickens, but unless you have visited the farm and or personally know the chicken farmers. You might just as well be eating chickens raised in confinement.

In the US, in order to be labelled "free range" the chickens only need to have access to the outdoors. Forget all your bucolic fantasies about the outdoors on an MGM backlot "farm"

You could have a chicken house the size of an airplane hangar packed with chickens, living and dead (they die quite readily) poor ventilation, no lights, and at the far end of the 200 yard vault you have a two foot opening to a concrete slab.

That set up is common and will allow you to label your chicken "cage free" and "free range"

You cannot rely on the US government to protect your interests. Since the USDA got involved in defining terms like "Organic" the terms have become meaningless. Actually, marketing has always been based on bullshit, but now it seems stronger than ever.

Really, you cannot believe anything that is written on packaging, especially if the company doing the writing have more money than the government agencies that are allegedly regulating them.

In other words if you didn't personally see that chicken running around before you ate it then it came from a confinement operation.

[Pie]

When are we going to start growing our meat in vats, without brains?