New Year's Eve - Time for Change

I didn't expect to be writing an article for the New Year , and I certainly didn't plan to write about "change" on New Year's Eve, in the middle of baking dozens of cookies and an enormous cake for tomorrow's champagne breakfast.

But the headline on today's New York Times changed everything. What can I say? Please read the article about the processing of ground beef linked here. Nothing I could write would speak as clearly as the exposure of a company whose meat products are used in a majority of hamburger sold nationwide.

The company, Beef Products, processes meat scraps with ammonia, which they claim kills both E. coli and salmonella. Federal officials have allowed that ammonia to be classified as a "processing agent," so it is not listed as an ingredient on any labels of packaged ground meat. Moreover, the U.S.D.A. accepted Beef Products' own study as sufficient evidence that their ammonia process eliminated pathogens, and as a result, this meat has been exempt from further testing and recalls, even as E. coli outbreaks have been increasing across the country.

Now, records obtained by the New York Times clearly (and horribly) reveal that Beef Products are not, and probably never have been, free of E. coli or salmonella. In testing for school lunch programs, pathogens have been found dozens of times, and school lunch officials banned Beef Products from a facility in Kansas in July of this year. Still, Beef Products has continued to supply their ammonia-injected meat products to other customers, which include McDonald's, Burger King and other fast-food chains as well as grocery stores and institutional food programs.

It's a holiday and I have no more time to write. Please follow this link to the New York Times and read the information yourself.

Then think very carefully about a time for change, and your New Year's Resolution.