In the news today is a story about a beef recall, with 380,000 pounds of possibly E coli contaminated beef being recalled. E coli contamination occurs in the slaughterhouse when meat (i.e. animal flesh) gets contaminated by animal feces.
Grain based cattle diets promote the growth of E. coli. Cattle that eat a normal diet of grass or hay do not have the pathogenic strains of E coli like 0157:H7 that is responsible for more than 20,000 infections and 200 deaths each year in the United States.
Grain based diets for cattle not only promotes E coli growth, it is also unbelievably inefficient as the grain could be fed directly to people. According to WikiAnswers.com it takes 16.2 pounds of grain and 5,214 gallons of water to create one pound of beef. The solution to world hunger and water restrictions is right in front of us on our dinner plates!
You may think "well vegetables get E coli contamination too." That is true, and the source of it is almost always traced back to contaminated runoff from neighboring so called factory farms with large numbers of animals in confined spaces.
Thanks for reading.
Mark Fergusson