It’s a given that every year, a week or two prior to Thanksgiving, there will be a host of stories related to food safety and the traditional turkey dinner. Inevitably, salmonella will be the villain. These stories are always framed in terms of “proper handling” and cooking your bird for a set amount of time at a certain temperature (to kill what’s most likely to affect humans consuming contaminated holiday-associated foods).
Proper handling of your Thanksgiving turkey. (NY Times Cooking)
Of course, if you’ve been paying attention, you’ll know that industrial meat (and poultry) manufacturing in America is one hot mess. Not even addressing the compassion angle about cruelty to animals, large, factory-farming operations are breeding grounds for disease and contamination. But why face reality when it comes to meat and poultry consumption? Let’s simply wing it when it comes to cooking ole’ Tom Turkey and hope for the best.
Just a year ago, there was an outbreak of the common bacterial disease that affects the intestinal tract. Salmonella bacteria typically live in animal and human intestines and are shed through feces. Humans become infected most frequently through contaminated water or food. The outbreak linked to raw turkey products, which began in California in 2017, has now spread across 35 states and sickened 164 people.
When I was still eating animal products, I believed somehow that chicken and turkey (white meat) was healthier. The reason I believed that was due to the clever marketing done by the poultry industry and their lobbyists. It was supposedly leaner and better for me as a carnivore. That was a lie, but like most Americans, being a duped consumer was part of my red, white, and blue DNA.
Only when I decided to forego meat and dairy back in the fall of 2016 after visiting Mark for the final time, was I able to I begin deprogramming myself from a lifetime of lies about meat, especially poultry products. This was when I began “digging into” Michael Greger’s How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease, a gift Mark had given us the Christmas prior. Of course, wearing my meat necklace at the time, I let the book sit on the shelf, gathering dust. Once I began reading, however, the element that hit me the hardest was his scientific take down of chicken. On page 92 of the book, he writes that eating chickens, not their eggs, “is actually the most common source of Salmonella poisoning.” Yummy!
If you think that poultry producers care about consumers, think again. Another particularly virulent strain of bacteria was unleashed on poultry-eating Americans in 2013. Foster Farms, the sixth-largest poultry manufacturer in the U.S. was responsible for a Salmomella outbreak that lasted from March 2013 to July 2014. What caused this long duration? Well, Foster Farms continuing churning out contaminated chicken “despite repeated warnings from the CDC.”
But I know you’re thinking, “this is an isolated case. Of course. Denial knows know bounds when it comes to glossing over the truth. From a well-documented article on Greger’s NutritionFacts website, we learn this:
Every year the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tests the U.S. retail meat supply for the presence of fecal bacteria. When consumers think of manure in ground meat, hamburger comes to mind, but the latest survey found only 7 out of 10 samples of beef positive for E. coli, compared to more like 9 out of 10 samples of turkey, including the type blamed for human urinary tract infections. Turkey also had the highest contamination rates for Enterococcus faecalis and multidrug resistant Enteroccocus faecium.
Want a bit more “stuffing” to go with your turkey this Thankgiving? This is from Pew, another fact-based watchdog. But given that we are now living in the age of “the art of lying,” unleashed upon us by our obfuscator-in-chief, who gives a damn about veracity?
Contaminated meat and poultry products are responsible for an estimated 2 million illnesses in the United States each year. Significant health care costs arise from these infections: Estimates reach nearly $2.5 billion for cases linked to poultry, $1.9 billion for pork, and $1.4 billion for beef. From 2005 to 2015, potential contamination with one of three pathogens—Salmonella, Listeria monocytogenes, or Shiga toxin-producing E. coli—led to recalls representing about half of the roughly 425 million pounds of meat and poultry products removed from the marketplace for any reason.
According to Pew’s Sandra Eskin, who is the director of their safe food project:
“An effective food safety system includes measures to prevent contamination at every step along the meat and poultry supply chain,” said Eskin. “More can and should be done on farms and feedlots.”
More can (and should) be done, but it won’t. Why? Are you paying any attention to the administration of the Orange Menace? It’s staffed by industry hacks and others who don’t give a damn about safety when it comes to food or anything else for that matter.
Food safety shouldn’t be an ideological thing, but it is. This president has politicized everything—even Thanksgiving and whether or not your turkey dinner won’t make you sick, or worse.
I’ll stick to my vegetables and vegan mashed potatoes, thank you! You can have my share of turkey. [Although, I just learned that you need to avoid romaine lettuce: another reminder to “buy local.”-jb]
A plate of veggies and tofu is a safe bet.