Meat Industry

Ask British artist Sue Coe questions about her technique or the critical analysis her work has received from the art world and she dismisses them with a wave of her hand. "I couldn't care less about whether people call my work cartooning, drawing, painting or whatever," she declares. "I don't read art magazines and have no interest in painterly issues. My work is an opportunity to present information."

Now may be time to hoard the bacon and load up on steaks. The White House put out a warning that sequestration -- or the steep, automatic spending cuts set to take effect in March -- may result in furloughing every meat and poultry inspector for two weeks, effectively shutting down a major part of the U.S. meat industry. Factories are required to get inspection approval before shipping out their meat. So no inspectors means no beef, pork, poultry or egg products can be processed and delivered to stores during that time.

Kroger Co., the nation's largest supermarket retailer, on Thursday joined the growing list of companies that have dropped the beef product widely referred to as pink slime from their fresh meat cases. Both Kroger and the Stop & Shop chain said they would no longer sell fresh meat containing the product, known by the industry as lean finely textured beef. On Wednesday, supermarket chains Safeway, Supervalu and Food Lion said they would stop selling fresh meat containing the product because of widespread consumer concerns in the wake of media reports.

Kroger Co., the nation's largest supermarket retailer, on Thursday joined the growing list of companies that have dropped the beef product widely referred to as pink slime from their fresh meat cases. Both Kroger and the Stop & Shop chain said they would no longer sell fresh meat containing the product, known by the industry as lean finely textured beef. On Wednesday, supermarket chains Safeway, Supervalu and Food Lion said they would stop selling fresh meat containing the product because of widespread consumer concerns in the wake of media reports.

Activists with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals like to nude up in their demonstrations, and last week was no exception. On Friday, three ladies stripped down (well, they were wearing panties) in front of a Farmer John sausage processing plant in Vernon to protest the consumption of meat and what they claim is the inhumane treatment of farm animals. The activists were laid out in human-sized meat trays and then bound in plastic wrap to drive home the message that animals and humans are all meat.

Smithfield Foods Inc. said it planned to cut 1,800 jobs and close six factories as part of a restructuring that comes amid an overall slump in the meat industry. The company plans to combine seven of its independent operating companies into three main units and close plants in six cities, including one in its hometown of Smithfield, Va., by December. The meat industry is slumping as companies such as Smithfield recover from volatile energy and commodity costs that reached record highs over the summer.

I thank McKenna for her insightful article. I went to see Coe's "Porkopolis" at the Santa Monica Museum, and her images still haunt me. They reminded me of the time I saw a graphic movie about the meat industry, which prompted me to become a vegetarian. However, Coe's images themselves are not graphic. As she says, "I want the work to be rooted in grief rather than rage." Coe the committed political activist emerges as a beautiful human being. HENRY BRUNELL Chatsworth

Scientists at the University of Georgia report that they have cloned a calf from a piece of meat. En route to the supermarket, the side of fresh beef was sampled for cells from the kidney area, and the cells supplied genes from which a calf was cloned. It was born April 22 at the university in Athens. The cloners--biologist Steve Stice and colleagues at the university and at a biotechnology company, ProLinia Inc.--touted the value of cloning for the meat industry.

Now may be time to hoard the bacon and load up on steaks. The White House put out a warning that sequestration -- or the steep, automatic spending cuts set to take effect in March -- may result in furloughing every meat and poultry inspector for two weeks, effectively shutting down a major part of the U.S. meat industry. Factories are required to get inspection approval before shipping out their meat. So no inspectors means no beef, pork, poultry or egg products can be processed and delivered to stores during that time.

Packaged meats sold in supermarkets nationwide will soon carry labels showing nutritional content on a cut-by-cut basis, a spokesman for the meat industry announced Wednesday. John Francis, director of the National Meat and Livestock Board, said that the labels will show the cholesterol, sodium and fat contents as well as the amounts of calories, vitamins and minerals.

Activists with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals like to nude up in their demonstrations, and last week was no exception. On Friday, three ladies stripped down (well, they were wearing panties) in front of a Farmer John sausage processing plant in Vernon to protest the consumption of meat and what they claim is the inhumane treatment of farm animals. The activists were laid out in human-sized meat trays and then bound in plastic wrap to drive home the message that animals and humans are all meat.

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration restricted the routine use of a class of antibiotics known as cephalosporins in livestock, it picked an easy target. The agency's move is better than nothing, but nonetheless it is a reminder of the FDA's achingly slow and timid efforts to wean agriculture off the overuse of important medications. Call it a tiptoe forward after a recent giant step in the other direction and a long era of standing in one place. Eighty percent of the antibiotics used in this country are given to chicken, pigs, turkey and cattle, not because the animals are sick but to fatten them and prevent illness from sweeping through crowded pens.

The new study suggesting that nearly half of all meat and poultry may be contaminated with drug-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus is not going over well in the animal agriculture industry. One major trade association says that, for starters, it's downright misleading.     The American Meat Institute issued a news release saying the nation’s meat and poultry supply is “among the safest in the world.” The association, representing red meat and turkey processors, took special issue with the size of the study: “It is notable that the study involved only 136 samples of meat and poultry from 80 brands in 26 retail grocery stores in five U.S. cities.  This small sample is insufficient to reach the sweeping conclusions conveyed in a news release about the study.”   RELATED: Meat contaminated with resistant bacteria RELATED: So what's to be done about drug-resistant staph in meat and poultry?

Death and taxes — and what's left Re "Why not tax inherited wealth?," Opinion, July 6 Every person I know who has received an inheritance has spent it like the free money it is. Just last week a friend pulled up in a new luxury car, telling me how she had just purchased a whole house full of furniture and was planning a vacation — all courtesy of her late grandmother. Her brother and nephew had also bought expensive cars. Isn't this what the government wants?

With its blunt warning that antibiotics in meat "pose a serious threat to public health," the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has finally acknowledged what many scientists have been saying for a long time. For years, evidence has been mounting that extensive use of antibiotics in livestock, particularly to promote growth or prevent the spread of disease in crowded pens, has resulted in the development of drug-resistant bacteria. The issue is not that the meat itself is infected or that consumers are ingesting antibiotics with their protein, but that the overuse of antibiotics is diminishing the efficacy of crucial medications needed for human use. Estimates are that 70,000 Americans each year die from infections that once could be treated with common medications.

Year after year, legislation intended to preserve the effectiveness of available antibiotics by limiting their use in livestock is shot down. The latest bills introduced in both houses of Congress have been stalled for close to a year. Banning the use of antibiotics in perfectly healthy animals has always been the right thing to do for the health of the American public. Overuse of antibiotics, whether in animals or humans, renders them less effective because it leads to the development of resistant bacteria.

Nauseating as it was, last week's record-setting beef recall and the apparent feeding of meat from crippled "downer" cattle to our nation's children and others should come as little surprise. Although egregious to the point of obscenity, this latest meat scandal fits a pattern of regulatory anemia -- the byproduct of a decades-long bipartisan assault on "big government" -- that has opened the floodgates to all sorts of contamination shenanigans.

Recalling the muckraking food-industry exposes of almost a century ago, President Clinton on Saturday announced a new system for guarding against deadly bacteria in meat and poultry by relying more on scientific testing and less on the touch, sight and smell of federal inspectors. The responsibility for designing and implementing the new system--and its eventual cost of perhaps $100 million a year--will fall mainly on private industry.

In 1932, Winston Churchill, appalled by the leftover bones and gristle crowding his dinner plate, predicted that in 50 years "we shall escape the absurdity of growing a whole chicken in order to eat the breast or wing by growing these parts separately under a suitable medium." It's taken longer than that, but at the dawn of the 21st century we're finally closing in on tasty and eerily healthy meat grown by scientists instead of Old MacDonald. "It's been a thought problem for scientists for decades," says Jason Matheny, director of New Harvest, a nonprofit organization devoted to global efforts to produce cultured meat.

Smithfield Foods Inc. said it planned to cut 1,800 jobs and close six factories as part of a restructuring that comes amid an overall slump in the meat industry. The company plans to combine seven of its independent operating companies into three main units and close plants in six cities, including one in its hometown of Smithfield, Va., by December. The meat industry is slumping as companies such as Smithfield recover from volatile energy and commodity costs that reached record highs over the summer.