Bacterial Contamination

Animals on today’s factory farms are crammed by the tens of thousands into filthy sheds and slaughtered on killing floors that are contaminated with feces, vomit, and other bodily fluids. These unsanitary conditions have led to a rise in foodborne bacteria. Most of the flesh from the 10 billion cows, pigs, and birds butchered every year in the U.S. is contaminated with dangerous bacteria like E. coli, campylobacter, listeria, and other bacteria that live in the intestinal tracts and feces of animals. And it only takes a few bacteria to make us sick: Scientist Guy Plunkett of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where the genetic code of E. coli was mapped, reports that as few as 10 to 100 E. coli bacteria are sufficient to infect a human.¹³

According to former USDA microbiologist Gerald Kuester, “[T]here are about fifty points during processing where cross-contamination can occur. At the end of the line, the birds are no cleaner than if they had been dipped in a toilet.”¹⁴ When you bring this meat home, everything that it touches in your kitchen can also become contaminated, so even if you cook the meat thoroughly, the harmful bacteria may still be thriving on your cutting boards, in your refrigerator, and on anything else that the meat touched before it was cooked. Nicols Fox, author of the widely acclaimed book Spoiled, says, “There are actually cases where people have become seriously ill because of the spatula that was used to transfer an uncooked, then a cooked burger. To me it is really asking the consumer to operate a kind of biohazard lab ....”¹⁵

Deli cuts, which may be contaminated with listeria, are often the source of cross-contamination. In an article on the top 10 foods that we should never eat, Men’s Health magazine explains, “While only 3 percent of the deli meats sampled contained [l]isteria at the point of purchase, the bacteria’s rapid growth rate on cuts stored even under ideal conditions concerned researchers. … Without regular cleaning, the [deli slicer’s] blade can transfer [listeria] bacteria from roast beef to turkey to pastrami and back.”¹⁶ Bacteria are normally killed during cooking, but deli meats aren’t usually cooked. Researchers from the USDA, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have collectively identified cold cuts as “high risk” foods.¹⁷

The bacteria that thrive on meat and other animal products can cause food poisoning, which can result in symptoms ranging from stomach cramps and diarrhea to organ failure and death. Every year in the U.S., there are 75 million cases of food poisoning, and 5,000 of these cases are fatal.¹⁸ The USDA reports that 70 percent of food poisoning is caused by contaminated animal flesh.¹⁹ And the situation appears to be getting worse. According to a 2006 report by the nonprofit Food and Water Watch, the percentage of chicken carcasses in slaughterhouses that test positive for salmonella nearly doubled between 2000 and 2005.²⁰ One-hundred-six major slaughterhouses—including many owned by the largest meat corporations, like Tyson, Pilgrim’s Pride, and Perdue—failed in at least one major testing period.²¹ Amazingly, the USDA, at the urging of the meat industry, decided in 2006 to reduce the number of slaughterhouses tested for salmonella.²²

No one can deny that tainted meat is a major health threat, and even meat-industry insiders admit that the flesh on grocery store shelves is contaminated with deadly pathogens. According to Steve Bjerklie, the executive editor of Meat Processing magazine, “Nearly every food consumers buy in supermarkets and order in restaurants can be eaten with certainty for its safety—except for meat and poultry products.”²³ Delmer Jones, president of the U.S. Meat Inspection Union, warns, “The [USDA] labels are misleading the public. The label should declare that the product has been contaminated with fecal material.”²⁴ The research backs up his statement: A USDA study found that “greater than 99 percent of broiler chicken carcasses had detectable E. coli,” and Consumer Reports researchers have confirmed that some generic E. coli (an indicator of fecal contamination) is present on almost every chicken on the market today.²⁵

Documents from whistleblowers in the meat industry note countless cases of contaminated meat slipping into the food supply: “[R]ed meat animals and poultry that were dead on arrival were hidden from inspectors and hung up to be butchered. … Severed heads from cancer eye cattle were switched to smaller carcasses before inspection so less meat would be condemned. … Up to 25 percent of slaughtered chicken on the inspection line was covered with feces, bile, and ingesta [partially digested food found in the stomach or esophagus]. … In one enforcement action at a single facility, inspectors retained six tons of ground pork with rust which was bound for a school lunch program in Indiana, 14,000 pounds of chicken speckled with metal flakes, 5,000 pounds of rancid chicken necks, and 721 pounds of green chicken that made employees gag from the smell.”²⁶

Affidavits from meat inspectors offer these descriptions of tainted meat: “Company employees told us that rats were all over the coolers at night, running on top of meat and gnawing at it. … [W]e saw fecal contamination get through—up to one-foot smears—as well as flukes [liver parasites], grubs [wormlike fly larvae that burrow into the cow’s skin and work their way through the animal’s body], abscesses [encapsulated infections filled with pus], [hide] hair, and ingesta ....”²⁷

The USDA and the meat industry have responded to concerns from consumer groups about bacteria in animal products by implying that it’s reasonable to sell tainted meat and assume that consumers will cook it properly to kill the dangerous microbes. Dr. Patricia Griffin of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention responds by asking, “Is it reasonable that if a consumer undercooks a hamburger that their three-year-old dies?”²⁸ Some of the meat sold to consumers, like deli meat, isn’t meant to be cooked anyway, and many people eat it without realizing that it can harbor dangerous bacteria such as listeria.

We can’t trust that the government will protect us from meat contaminated with E. coli and other dangerous bacteria because the deregulation of the meat industry has turned slaughterhouse inspectors into paper-pushers who are often prohibited from removing contaminated meat from the processing line. Gail Eisnitz, author of Slaughterhouse, says, “The inspectors I talked to went on the record and said that the regulations are just pieces of paper that they’re unable to enforce. Deadly, contaminated meat is just pouring out of those plants, and I have the documentation to prove it.”²⁹

The U.S. government is the only Western government that does not have the power to order a recall of contaminated meat—the meat company has to do it voluntarily, so all recalls are at the discretion of the company that stands to lose profits both from the lost sale of the meat and the bad public relations of admitting that it shipped potentially lethal meat to the public.

And even when a company agrees to issue a recall, studies have shown that when contaminated meat is recalled, only about half of it is actually recovered—the rest remains in grocery stores.³⁰ Learn more about how the government fails to protect consumers from tainted animal products.

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