Author's note: In response to numerous requests, we've replaced the Preface material originally presented on this webpage with an actual excerpt from the text. The following description of the Hudson Foods Beef Recall appears in Chapter 4 of the text, on pages 143-144.
Highlight: Back to Basic Concepts Irradiated Beef and Forgotten Wholeness
Most objections to food irradiation have focused on the issue of food quality. These objections cite the failure of irradiation to address the underlying, root-level causes of food contamination in the U.S. food supply. As an example of this failure, critics have pointed to the story of Hudson Foods, and the most recent FDA expansion of food irradiation to include beef.
The Hudson Foods Recall
On December 3, 1997, in response to a petition by the Hudson Foods Company based in Rogers, Arkansas, the FDA announced its decision to allow irradiation of beef at 4.5-7.0 kGy. The decision came after a six-month series of events that began in early June 1997 when one of Hudson’s meat packing facilities in Columbus, Nebraska unknowingly began to pack beef contaminated with the E. coli bacterium 0157:H7. The $16 million dollar beef packing facility had been opened by Hudson in 1995 to process beef for the Burger King fast food chain. Each week it produced approximately 2.5 million pounds of beef.
On August 12, 1997, Hudson voluntarily recalled 20,000 pounds of beef following reports received by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment linking E. coli poisoning to Hudson-packed meat. By August 15, 1.2 million pounds had been recalled. By August 20, following reports of illness in Gainesville, Florida also linked to Hudson, all 25 million pounds of beef packed since June 5, 1997 were recalled and the Nebraska plant was shut down. On August 23, Burger King announced that it would stop buying meat from Hudson Foods. On August 28, the Columbus, Nebraska packing facility was sold by Hudson to IBP, the Dakota City, Nebraska meat packing company (and the largest meat packer in the United States).
Critics of food irradiation like Least Cost Formulations, Ltd. in Virginia Beach, Virginia have argued that while irradiation of the Hudson beef would likely have prevented these E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks, and in this respect, would have been a life-saving public health step, it would, in the long run, have only placed consumers and the food supply in further jeopardy by leaving the real source of the problem untouched. This reasoning of Least Cost Formulations is parallel to the reasoning about environmental nutrition presented in the first chapter of this textbook. Chapter 1 argued that over the past hundred years nutritionists have settled for a passive look at food and nutrients in which the association between food and nutrients was all that mattered. Chapter 1 argued that the mere presence of vitamins in food became the focus of nutritionists without any attention to the question of how the vitamins arrived there in the first place. According to the reasoning presented in Chapter 1, if this question had been asked, nutritionists would have found themselves looking further into the environment and into the dynamic relationship between food and its world.
Origins of E. Coli Contamination
Critics of the FDA decision to prevent future Hudson Foods episodes by irradiating beef have adopted this same basic line of reasoning. They have argued that the mere presence of E. coli 0157:H7 in beef, this simple association of an organism with a food can never be the real issue. The real issue is how E. coli 0157:H7 gets into the beef in the first place. Least Cost Formulations has argued that this dynamic process involves a variety of factors. The factors include the failure of ranchers to wash manure off cattle before sending them to market; the failure of ranchers to stop feeding animals at least half a day before slaughter, thus reducing their intestinal contents and lessening the chance of bursting at slaughter; the practice of packagers like Hudson to reuse “rework” (broken or poorly formed meat patties) two and three days after initial processing, thus extending the risk of contamination by reusing product over several days; the failure of food servers at fast food restaurants to cook ground beef at 160 degrees Fahrenheit; the lack of E. coli testing at multiple points along the beef production process; and the failure of governmental agencies like the USDA and FDA to set and enforce regulations preventing all of the failures described above.
From the point of view of this textbook, all of these failures can also be classified as a further example of forgotten wholeness. Once cattle have been separated from their natural environment and ranchers have been separated from their natural instinct to care for animals, the stage is set for malnourishment. There is no way for irradiation to gallop in and save the day. Once the dynamics of contamination are ignored in favor of a look at the simple presence of bacteria, there is no way to avoid a response that believes the mere absence of bacteria will solve the problem. And once the good of the whole has been exchanged for the good of one part at the present moment, there is no way for the food supply to provide nourishment.
The Future of Irradiation
The ongoing disregard of food-environment dynamics in nutrition will most likely encourage increasing use of food irradiation even beyond its current scope. With 346 million bushels of wheat being produced annually in the U.S., over 500,000 tons of poultry meat and processed poultry products, and total animal protein consumption reaching 224 pounds per person per year, the potential for increase is high. At the time of this publication, approximately 65 million pounds of spices and dried or dehydrated vegetable products are irradiated annually in the U.S. Worldwide, total food irradiation has been estimated at 500,000 tons, or 500 million pounds per year.
The contents of this web site are the property of HingePin.
Copyright © HingePin 2007