
The Burger That Shattered Her Life - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html
======
chris123
A few excerpts:

\- confidential grinding records

\- hamburgers made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like
product derived from scraps that were ground together

\- processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

\- those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more
likely to have had contact with feces

~~~
gorbachev
I think the most important excerpt from the article:

\- slaughterhouses and grinders are resisting testing their ingredients for E.
coli, because it costs too much

\- they also blacklist customers who do their own testing

\- U.S.D.A., the federal agency regulating the industry, is not requiring
proper testing, instead they issue recommendations the large companies mostly
ignore

\- U.S.D.A has not imposed any type of sanctions for food safety violations
regarding E. coli outbreaks at facilities dealing with ground beef

~~~
chris123
Agreed. For some reason all this makes me want to throw this out there:

This "resistance" and "blacklist" and "regulator not regulating" shit (fitting
word, given this topic) sounds familiar. Isn't it the same song they play on
Wall Street and in Washington... the song that lead us the "financial crisis"?

I am sick of politicians and regulators being in bed with lobbyists and
corporations instead of looking after us.

And I'm sick of the rest of us fucking taking it. Why are people not standing
up for each other, saying they're mad as hell and aren't going to take it
anymore (to borrow a phrase)?

I'll close my mini-rant by posting this link to a HuffPo article that comes to
mind: "Common Sense 2009" by Larry Flint (yes, that Larry Flint):
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-
sense-2009_...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-flynt/common-
sense-2009_b_264706.html)

~~~
trominos
I'm sick of reading the same damn complaint over and over and over again. I
could take it -- I _expected_ it -- when it was just reddit, but somehow the
theoretically more level-headed Hacker News community has decided that it too
needs to incessantly talk about lobbyists.

We get it -- the political system has fucked-up incentives. Duh. SHUT UP.

~~~
pstuart
STFU, perhaps.

But wouldn't it be wonderful to hack our government to effect change in same
(think wikileaks meets The Daily Show). We could have transparency via open
source tools and translate public knowledge to public action.

All we need are public records for every public penny spent in an open format.
There might be some difficulties in getting that....

------
bmunro
An interesting thing to me is that E. coli will be killed if the meat is
cooked all the way through.

Anyone that gets infected by this strain (or any other) hasn't been cooking
their meat properly. Or the hamburger chain hasn't.

Rare steak is a different matter. Pathogenic bacteria will only be present on
the surface of the meat. Cooking the surface of the meat kills the bacteria.
But in the case of minced beef, the bacteria is mixed through the whole of the
meat.

~~~
adriand
If you read the whole article, you'll see that in fact, the burgers were so
contaminated with e-coli that they could have easily caused infection simply
through contact with surfaces in the kitchen. In an experiment with a similar
strain, scientists found that even after washing a cutting board with soap, it
was still contaminated with e-coli, and when they wiped it with a towel, that
got contaminated too.

To make matters worse, in a warm kitchen, e-coli will double once every 45
minutes.

In other words, once you've got one of these little biological weapons in your
kitchen, if you're not wearing a hazmat suit and handling it like it's an
ebola sample, you could get infected.

~~~
weaksauce
If my differential equations class taught me anything it is the fact that the
growth curve for population hits a saturation point where there is not enough
food/area/resources to sustain that kind of growth. Not saying that you can't
get sick but I don't know if the hazmat suit is a necessity.

------
edw519
_Two current employees said the flow of carcasses keeps up its torrid pace
even when trimmers get reassigned, which increases pressure on workers._

What the hell is this, 1906? Sounds like not much has changed since Upton
Sinclair wrote "The Jungle".

~~~
NathanKP
In the article they mentioned treating fatty meat with ammonia to kill
bacteria then adding it to hamburgers. Disgusting. That did remind me a lot of
"The Jungle". If I remember correctly in "The Jungle" they also treated rotten
meat scraps with some sort of chemical blend to make them edible, then used
them in sausages.

News like this makes me want to be vegetarian.

------
bh23ha
I consider myself a libertarian, however:

 _Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test
their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding
companies_

Things like this keep reminding me that the free market is not perfect.

~~~
pstuart
What free market?

------
rbanffy
That kind of company is what we get when we hire a manager that knows only
about management and nothing about whatever he or she is managing.

------
dhughes
I remember reading about two siblings who became sick, they had to be
hospitalized and while they were in the hospital their parents gave them ice
cream as a treat, but soon after their condition worsened.

They later found out the reason they were hospitalized was because the ice
cream was contaminated with e.coli and while in the hospital the ice cream,
same brand, they were given was also contaminated.

Even worse was the siblings, who survived, had a rare genetic trait that was
affected when they were infected with the e.coli and now they have lifelong,
permanent disability due to that freak occurrence.

This happened in the US, the mid-west I think and the result was diabetes or
some sensitivity to drugs, I forget and can't find the article.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Google "salmonella vanilla" and you might find it. That's what it was called
around here: I had a friend who used to work for Schwan's, the company that
made the ice cream. Although I should note that the problem wasn't caused by
Schwan's: it was their supplier who was sending them contaminated dairy
products.

------
maximilian
I got e.coli after spending spring break in Mexico with my dad. I didn't get
it as bad as this girl, but it was awful nonetheless. I was horribly sick for
4 days with diarrhea and vomiting and couldn't really eat or drink much. What
is scary about it, is that it affects everybody differently and can do
anything from giving cramps and the shits, to killing you.

Ugh, it was awful.

------
puredemo
I had no idea e-coli could do that.

Then again, I've been eating a vegan diet for years now so I don't really keep
up with meat product dangers..

~~~
tomjen2
Sometimes I really wish Vegans would shut up when the news fundamentally don't
matter to them. They are about as relevant as Atheists in a Catholic mess.

~~~
jonny_noog
_They are about as relevant as Atheists in a Catholic mess._

Freudian slip?

~~~
tomjen2
Horrible spelling.

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hughprime
While alarmism is always fun, it's worth taking a step back and comparing the
risk of dying from a hamburger to the risk of dying from, say, a shark attack,
or a bee sting, or being struck by lightning, or whatever your favourite
unlikely cause of death may be.

------
davidw
This is not the sort of "hacking" that the site's title refers to. What's it
doing here?

~~~
alexgartrell
If it doesn't fit, flag it.

~~~
davidw
I do. But since I have plenty of useless karma to burn, I figure I might as
well try and use it to do my small part to keep the site from turning into
another reddit. And one thing that will keep that from happening is staying
rigorously on topic. It's important to encourage people to do so.

