Modern Meat
What could be simpler than a hamburger? Take a ground beef patty, throw it on a grill, wait a few minutes as the fat sizzles, maybe add some cheese, and stick it on a bun. It’s a thoroughly American operation that takes place countless times a day all around the country. The average American, in fact, eats three hamburgers a week. And with more meat available than ever before, today’s beef costs 30 percent less than it did in 1970, making it that much more attractive to consumers looking for a quick, cheap meal.
But in Modern Meat, FRONTLINE goes inside the world of the modern American meat industry and shows that this once simple product, the hamburger, is no longer so simple.
Nor can you assume that it’s safe. While sweeping changes in the meat industry — making it vastly more centralized, high-tech, and efficient — have led to the low prices, the transformation has also introduced new risks. In “Modern Meat,” FRONTLINE speaks with scientists and industry observers who say that pooling thousands of cows in feedlots makes it easier for bacteria to spread from one animal to another.
“Cows tend to produce feces [and] feces is primarily bacteria,” says Glenn Morris, a microbiologist at the University of Maryland and a former USDA official. “In the larger feedlots,” he adds, “there’s a greater chance for the passage of microorganisms back and forth. All of that contributes to the spread of microorganisms like E. coli.” (Excerpt from pbs.org)
Watch the full documentary now
There IS english! Oh thank goodness. I didn’t know what was going on at first. That was a great documentary. VERY eye-opening.
Just confirming that there IS English in this documentary. It starts around 2 min. 30 sec.
I was the HACCP rep for my department in a beef plant for 3 years. I worked sanitation, and we did a pretty good job. I worked there and I was willing to still eat our own product without hesitation. USDA inspectors are really needed however, but rarely see what we did on sanitation and self inspection before she made her expected but unannouced rounds after we released the machines for inspection before production.
I suppose the worst example that we fixed ourselves (before I started working there) without discovery was the fact that we didn’t realize that the exhaust hoods were so strong they were pulling chucks of hamburger into them and it was pooling in pockets that would rot, get maggots, and then drop back into the hamburger while being mixed. The world may never know how many little maggots got mixed up in the hamburger before we figured out how to clean those hoods. Who would think about looking up rather than down for contamination in a plant?
I don’t think the USDA ever knew, bless her very thorough and dedicated heart. I’m sure she would have shut us down.
Other than that, we were really quite clean. This documentary didn’t talk about my favorit “hazard” however. We had to have metal detectors in all our meat conveyors because all the meat had bullets or pellets or bb’s from good old boys or whoever that thought it fun to shoot at the cows and obviously got stuck in the meat.
This was a very fair documentary. I’m very glad we have the USDA.
hamburgergerman, thats frightening! Food Inc. made me stop eating non-grass fed/organic or Kosher meats and so I’m about to watch this film too. I was looking at it reading it and read your comment. That gives me another reason to switch!!!
I just watched it. Its an older film from the first Bush era and its incredible how nothing has changed! If you go to watch it, start at 2:10 minutes for English.
“There IS english! Oh thank goodness” . Kinda hard knowing only your language huh?
That person protecting the meat industry that provides for schools sucks! He should go to freaken jail!!!!! Why would he protect someone that has meat products with salmonella present? Only sick people do that.
The whole issue is being approached from the wrong angle.
Watch “Earthlings” to understand that the problem has much deeper roots. As long as we don’t respect animals (making them sick by feeding wrong foods, keep them in the “concentration camps”), over consume and don’t educate ourselves on the benefits on plant-based diet, cases mentioned in the documentary will become more prevalent.
Become vegan and you will do good to yourselves, your family, animals and our environment.
Im daily windblown over the fact how people defending their “rights to eat meat” Its like they think they live on a total different planet. People really wanna industrial the lives of creatures and torture them to death, for a good meal fulled with bad bacteria. And the energy amount thats waste in this type of “killing culture” is like, WOW, you really want to be a part of that? And the answer is mostly yes.
irradiated meat sounds dodgy.. I wouldn’t buy it off the shelf
Completely turned off by hamburgers now ..
I think I’ll stick to tofu…