Raw feeders; ground beef recall

Thank you Janice!

Good Lord! What's going on?  First spinach, then lettuce, now ground beef.

Joyce

Thanks!  I hope you don't mind, but I posted this on a few others sites!

This is getting down right scarey.  I don't feed mine raw and I rarely cook ground beef for them, usually ground turkey.  I was almost scared to eat my salad last night after hearing about the lettuce.

Please don't panic - the E. Coli that caused the recall is E. Coli 0157:H7. This can cause illness in humans (most particularly the young or elderly) but there is no evidence that is causes illness in animals - including dogs.

Dogs may be able to carry and transfer the bacteria through feces so it is still important to use proper food handling. You just don't have to rush to the vet if you think your dog may have eaten some of the recalled meat.

Thank you factory farming.  That's the same strain that was contaminating Odwalla apple juice a few years ago.  I think I'm going to order a pasture raised cow from the guy down the road - that will be about six months worth of meat.  It's just too scary.  I hate the factory farms.

I'm a near-compulsive washer/cleaner when it comes to raw meat.  I made the switch to raw when I had two little kids and I was always aware of the risk.  One thing to remember - switch disinfectants every so often so you don't foster resistant bacteria.  I rotate between Lysol, Pine-sol (actually a generic), a dairy cleaner I get at the feed store, and Clorox cleanup.

I do half raw... I guess I'll just use bison instead of beef for a while lol... Mine seem to do better on it anyway for some reason... >o.o;<

lets not forget carrot juice.
 
[linkhttp://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food-disease/news/oct1006bot.html]http://www.cidrap.umn.edu/cidrap/content/fs/food-disease/news/oct1006bot.html[/link]

Please don't panic - the E. Coli that caused the recall is E. Coli 0157:H7. This can cause illness in humans (most particularly the young or elderly) but there is no evidence that is causes illness in animals - including dogs

 
 That's pretty interesting; is there a link that lists which strains of E.coli cause illness in dogs and which ones don't?

Thank you factory farming. That's the same strain that was contaminating Odwalla apple juice a few years ago. I think I'm going to order a pasture raised cow from the guy down the road - that will be about six months worth of meat. It's just too scary. I hate the factory farms.

 
Most people don't realize the impact factory farms have on the environment and our health.

I'm a near-compulsive washer/cleaner when it comes to raw meat. I made the switch to raw when I had two little kids and I was always aware of the risk. One thing to remember - switch disinfectants every so often so you don't foster resistant bacteria. I rotate between Lysol, Pine-sol (actually a generic), a dairy cleaner I get at the feed store, and Clorox cleanup.

Glad I am not the only one!! This is one of the biggest reasons I chose not to feed raw...the cleanup takes me forever and I feel like it is never clean enough![:@]

I used to work at Chik-Fil-A so I got pretty good at decomtamination.  You know they bread the raw chicken fillets right in the store - that may have been the grossest job I've ever had and I didn't even know anything about how chickens are raised, then.  Brrrrr.

Some tips for keeping things clean.

Never touch raw meat to anything porous.  If you can't help it (like if you have wooden countertops or wood trim on the backspash), cover it with Saran wrap.  Cover any nooks, cracks, or crannies, too.

Wear disposable gloves.  I get boxes of gloves made with the same stuff that sandwich bags are made of.  They are light and cheap.  Sometimes I use several in a job. Watch what you touch with your gloves.  My experience at Chik-Fil-A gave me a "spidey-sense" about the chain of things I'd touched - the chicken with my gloves, a knife, the counter where I laid the knife, possibly a cup that touched the counter where I laid the knife.

Have an entire counter devoted to meat preparation, if possible.  Nothing porous should be on that counter.

Use paper towels, not cloth towels, for quick emergency cleanups.  I use Clorox wipes.

Work with meat as cold as possible - near frozen is best.  Never thaw meat at room temperature.  I try to set it up so I'm working with meat that is literally still frozen as much as possible.   This means freezing it in single servings or pretty close to it.  Only work with as much meat as you can finish with and get back in the fridge/freezer, before it warms up to room temp.  When I worked with 40 pound cases of chicken for my dogs, I had a big cooler that I dumped it into for thawing and prep.  Then I'd bag it up into single meals and return it to the freezer.

All instruments, preparation surfaces, and dishes, should be able to be disinfected.  Never wash stuff that's touched raw meat, with your regular dishes.  Do a seperate load, or hand wash them seperately.  I catch up the dishes, feed the dogs, then wash their bowls.  Ditto when I prepare homeade ground products.

If the dishes need to be hand washed, clean off the gross materials with a normal wash, then follow with a ten minute bath of boiling water and/or a splash of bleach.  Antibacterial dish soap is NOT sufficient, as much as the Dawn commericals would like you to believe it.  []  My sideboard is porcelain (which I love), so I then clean the whole sink and sideboards with Comet with bleach.

Then I use the disinfecting cleaner to clean the prep area - countertop, front, wall, and floor.  I do a quick mop of the floor, unless I made a big oops, when of course I'll do a full mopup.

The dogs are fed in their crates.  I just can't have them tracking stuff around.  the only exception is Ben, who is trained to eat on a towel next to my bed, and sometimes I'll let him eat outside on the sidewalk if he's got a big chunk o' meat to tackle.

After dinner the dogs get let out one more time and I spray and wipe out their crates really quick.  I have a dandy little garden sprayer that I fill with the disinfectant du jour and it has a long nozzle that lets me get right back in the crate without stooping.

Every two or three days I go around with my dandy sprayer and do all the doors, light switches, floors, and sink handles.

I am NOT a clean freak, but my time slinging raw chicken made me a little compulsive about this one thing.

10-pound boxes of "PACKED FOR: DAVIS MOUNTAIN ORGANIC BEEF, 100% CERTIFIED ORGANIC 3-1 BEEF PATTIES," with lot code G6-540 or G6-544.

Five-pound packages of "DAVIS MOUNTAINS 100% ORGANIC BEEF, LEAN GROUND BEEF 90/10," with lot code G6-544.

One-pound packages of "MASTER CHOICE 100% ORGANIC ANGUS BEEF, 90/10 GROUND BEEF," with lot code G6-544.

One-pound packages of "DAVIS MOUNTAINS 100% CERTIFIED ORGANIC GROUND BEEF," with lot code G6-544

 
Several of the listing of product were Labled ORGANIC and some were not. This should concern the "organinc" fans. My other concerns with this are, if they are selling some of the beef as organic and some is not, WHY would they both be listed in the recall. Normally, in the processing industry, you would do "runs" or "batches" of a certain product. When these were complete, the equipment would be cleaned before anything else would be "run". This recall makes me question if they are using the same beef or if they are using different beef, but just not cleaning the equipment after, thus the contamination of different "runs". Not to mention, if that is their practice and they are not cleaning prior to each run, then you may NOT be getting 100% organic after all. Just made me wonder when I read the items listed on the recall.... [8|]
 
I guess nothing is safe [&o] 
 

Yup, that's the beauty of the new "organic" laws.  that's why I don't really ascribe to the new craze for organic.  The fact is, that the way they've set it up now, organic beef can be raised almost as inhumanely AND the same farm can raise conventional and organic, as long as the two are seperate herds.  There's even some allowances for breeding stock to cross over.

The "standards" that were put in place were jerryrigged by the big producers to favor them over small farmers that had been raising and selling humanely raised beef for generations.  Most of the standards focus on expensive facilties and provide huge loopholes so that big producers who could afford to change things around, could offer cheaper products with the "organic" label, while small family run farms couldn't afford to make the changes.

We're lucky in that this is a rural region and our current state dept of ag favors small family farms so they can compete locally.  A lot of our "naturally raised" and even "organic" products come from real family farms.  You have to go to farmer's markets, usually, for these products, however.  You can buy meat off the farm, but you might have to buy a great deal at once - but the price and the quality makes it well worth while.