There is another burger recall in Canada. Can this system ever be safe?
Most of the conversation about meat safety in Canada and the US revolves around inspection. Can we inspect better. This misses the core health issue.
When animals are concentrated and fed food that makes them ill and so have to be medicated, the risks are a product of the core process.
When animals are killed at the rate of 400 an hour, covered in shit, shit that is full of bacteria because of the mismatch in diet, the risks are escalated.
When small plants are shut because they cannot afford the inspection protocol, the risk is magnified further.
As this system concentrates further the risks shift into being inevitability's.
Healthy meat structurally comes from animals that eat what they are designed to eat. For cattle this means grass. No cow ever ate grain until the 20th century. Healthy animals live the lives that they are designed to live. This is not crowded into a shit filled pen with a concrete floor. Healthy animals who eat and live as they should do not need antibiotics. Animals that travel short distances to slaughter are not so stressed as those that are trucked long distance. Animals that are killed in small batches are killed with reverence and care as they deserve.
But what is going on is that in the guise of Food Safety - all that is truly safe is being sacrificed to the hugs factory system.
What we can do is to chose with our wallet. If 20% of Canadians only bought real meat from real producers and real outlets, then the big system would fall over.
