The Burger That Shattered Her Life | Hacker News Reader

The Burger That Shattered Her Life

nytimes.com

51 pointspeter12340 comments

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

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

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_...

Why are you telling us about it? Why don't you be the leader? Let us know what we can do to help you in the plan you've developed to solve the problem.

I live in Sweden, now (from Washington, DC, where I made these http://tr.im/ADXe after Bush's "re-election"). I'm just trying to stir the pot from here :) -Chris PS: "Mad as hell" speech from "Network": http://tr.im/madashellvideo (YouTube)

Clearly he doesn't have the millions of dollars and high class lawyers and lobbyists that the meat companies have. Individuals can do little to combat such huge companies.

What can he, or any one of us, do? We might start a website condemning the companies for their practices, we might write senators or try to get laws passed, but American government is not a true democracy, and it is not really ruled by the people.

The businesses have far too much power for individuals to fight effectively.

Of course this is my own pessimistic view, but I believe it is realistic.

We can take it to the streets. You may think I'm kidding; I'm not. http://twitpic.com/k8qjl (Banksy street art: "change")

I definitely approve of Banksy but you have to admit that graffiti street art doesn't change much. The big corporations are just going to laugh, say "how cute", and then pressure the local government to destroy the graffiti art because it is vandalism. Many of Banksy's art pieces have been removed in that very manner.

Banksy is a mainstream commercial artist now, he sells his work at Sotheby's, who mainly deal in traditional oil paintings. Was his "graffiti" just a clever marketing campaign?

I think it was a little bit of both: half clever marketing campaign, half a plea for change and an exposure of corruption.

Yes, I was talking about people taking it to the streets, not th Banksy, which was/is just an image I like, regardless of if he's "sold out," as they say. Sorry for any confusion. For me, anyway, this horse is pretty well dead and beaten, so I leave it to you guys to carry on. Real and rehotorical question: Would you participate in a mass protest standing up for others? Have you? Will you? How about organize one? Would/have/will/am now? If we don't stand up for each other... You know how that story ends (See "First they came").

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.

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....

Wow, angry man. Just shut up and take our ass-f--king. Smart.

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.

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.

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.

According to the article the bacteria can also contaminate surfaces in the kitchen. For instance, if you form hamburger patties on a cutting board, even if you wash the board with soap and water, there may still be live bacteria capable of infecting you on it.

For that reason, they recommend you also wash kitchen surfaces with a dilute bleach solution.

I remember a while back that wood cutting boards tended to have much lower bacteria counts than plastic ones did. I keep mine in good condition so they last a while and I don't have to be cutting down trees all the time.

http://www.knife-expert.com/cut-bo93.txt

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".

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.

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.

What free market?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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..

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.

It's been hard for them since their planet was destroyed by time-traveling Romulans.

They are about as relevant as Atheists in a Catholic mess.

Freudian slip?

Horrible spelling.

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

Good thing for you there's never been contamination of any vegetables like spinach...

It is not strictly a meat product danger.

http://www.snopes.com/food/warnings/salad.asp

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

I'm not sure I'd be so smug.

http://edition.cnn.com/HEALTH/9611/01/e.coli.poisoning/

http://www.cdc.gov/ecoli/2006/september/

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.

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

If it doesn't fit, flag it.

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.

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