Sort of makes some Chinese infant formulas and pet foods seem like a world wide industry standard, eh?

To the original topic: Keep in my that the USDA is partly responsible for this fiasco. Cattle get eye cancer. It's pretty common. USDA regulations require that beef sold commercially must be slaughtered in inspected and permitted facilities. Small farmers, who could easily set up slaughter operations on their own and sell truly LOCAL beef are forced to take their cattle to these processors. There are fewer and fewer approved slaughterhouses. Some state have NONE. This funnels cattle from all over the place into very few processing locations. When there is a contamination issue, EVERYBODY'S beef gets recalled. While you might think it's icky to imagine cancer in that opaque 4lb chubby of ground "beef" you got at the store for 2 bucks a pound SIGHT UNSEEN, imagine the impact to the local small producers who depend on having their animals slaughtered at this particular location. It's the only one in N. CA. Their transportation costs just went through the roof.
We'll only butcher 4 steers this year. I get around this nonsense by pre-selling shares in livestock. They are slaughtered here and processed off sight by a licensed processor who can cut, wrap and freeze on his site but not slaughter. His main business is game. My buyers are eating their own beef.

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You're a daisy if you do.
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84 Euro 240D 4spd. 220.5k sold
04 Honda Element AWD
1985 F150 XLT 4x4, 351W with 270k miles, hay hauler
1997 Suzuki Sidekick 4x4
1993 Toyota 4wd Pickup 226K and counting

Jack in the box

Most Rancho beef went to fast food chain | Petaluma360.com | Petaluma Argus-Courier | Petaluma, CA

Can we please see the damned list???

Now-Recalled Rancho Beef Found Its Way Into Jack in the Box and Other Fast-Food Hamburgers | Food Safety News



"The retail list for the Rancho recall is one of the longest ever, with more than 5,800 stores. But it turns out that even restaurants that make direct purchases from establishments involved in the recall are excluded from the retail list."

I worked at a dairy in Davie, FL for a month way back when, 1973. It wasn't all that modern, you were on the same plane as the cows, the newer ones have split elevations where you stand 3 or 4 feet lower.

I witnessed the sending off to butcher of old cows past their usefulness. The udders on these cows are so big that they sometimes step on one of the teats. Maybe that's when they get older, not sure. We had some we were still milking that were firing on 2 or 3 teats. At some point, for various reasons, the milk isn't happening well enough any more for them to be worth the feed and labor and a truck would come and we'd herd the cow onto it, over the cow's strong objections. Not a pretty sight. And that there was some beef that had mileage on it.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K

It is all about the money and protecting the well connected people with money. People who insure with and owe money to... you know.

When you eat an industrial burger the meat comes from hundreds or thousands of cows from several countries. If you don't personally know the people who raised, butchered and transported the beef it is an industrial burger. The meat from many cows and many packing plants is mixed together before it is tested because bad test results could be economically damaging to the guilty meat packer. Can't have that. It is better if you just eat your tumors, shut the fock up, and die.

Industrial meat is for people too stupid to care about the difference from real food. If they want to poison themselves with their ignorance why should I care. Everyone gets to choose what they shove in their mouth.

^ Eats at Jack-in-the-Box

I still want to see the restaurant list

Markets With Recalled Meat Get Outed; Restaurants Do Not | Food Safety News