So I’ve read that fecal matter can end up in ground beef but it’s not a concern with cuts like steak, etc. If anybody knows anything about this, do you think there would be a chance that fecal matter could end up in extra lean ground SIRLOIN?
thanks
Heat sterilizes…
Nick
Thanks for the reply Nick,
I understand that heat sterilizes but I mean that’s still pretty gross. I think most people would prefer to avoid the fecal matter in the first place rather than take comfort in eating feces that is no longer harmful due to exposure to high levels of heat.
[quote]ProjectX wrote:
Thanks for the reply Nick,
I understand that heat sterilizes but I mean that’s still pretty gross. I think most people would prefer to avoid the fecal matter in the first place rather than take comfort in eating feces that is no longer harmful due to exposure to high levels of heat.[/quote]
I don’t mean to make light of your concern, but do you realize that the human mouth is the most bacteria infested part of your body? Your toilet probably has less bacteria than the same part of you that kissed that girl on prom night. As the other poster noted, heat sterilizes. I think you should focus on more important concerns like whether your meat was cooked thouroughly.
If you’ve never seen the butchering process of cattle, I can tell you that it is one of the grossest things you’ll ever witness.
Shit is everywhere. They hang the meat in lockers (aging) until the outside layer is rotten.
But dang it’s tasty stuff, ain’t it?
[quote]rainjack wrote:
If you’ve never seen the butchering process of cattle, I can tell you that it is one of the grossest things you’ll ever witness.
Shit is everywhere. They hang the meat in lockers (aging) until the outside layer is rotten.
But dang it’s tasty stuff, ain’t it? [/quote]
I absolutely concur.
Some of the tastiest stuff out there is quite nasty if you see it being processed. Pretty much everything you buy has some kinda of waste product in it. Heck, even vegetables have some worms/larvae on them once in a while. In your lifetime you’ve eaten countless bugs, swallowed trillions and trillions of bacteria, and don’t even get me started about all the stuff that lives inside your mouth, intestines, etc.
If you’re worried about stuff like this, you may as well stop eating.
Ok so let’s say the guy working the meat grinder gets sloppy and loses two knuckles from the end of his pinky finger into a vat of say 800-1000 lbs of ground beef. This incident may slow down production until they can get him bandaged up but there’s now no way to seperate the ground pinky from the ground beef. Thus it’s my understanding that the USDA has a maximum allowable amount of human, rat, or whatever flesh that’s allowable per X amount of ground beef. I don’t have references to prove this, but if it is a lie then my friends in the meat packing industry told it.
To this I can attest:
When I was younger I worked on a dairy for one hot miserable summer. While out there I became acquainted with the guy whose job it was to artificially insemenate(sp?) the cows. One day I came out of the barn to find him with his entire plastic gloved arm pushed inside this heifer’s holiest of holies up to his shoulder. This was not unusual since it was his job. What caught my attention was that when he finished with his girl he removed his hand, took off the glove and began to eat a sandwich w/ the same hand he had just fisted this cow with. If that man survived a single day after that (which happily he did and to my knowledge he’s still alive) then you have nothing to fear from your local meat department.
While human waste is more than 50% bacteria, cow droppings are predominately undigested plant fiber.
Irradiation and/or proper cooking will sterilize whatever remains.
Having read ‘Fast Food Nation’, I cook all of my beef well-done, irradiated or not.
DI
Yeah, if you really want to be grossed out by meat processing stories try reading The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. There’s some scary shit in that book. I know that things have improved greatly since that time, but I’m sure similar things still occur occaisonally.
That one was written in 1905. The beef industry has made important changes since then. They’ve sped up the lines.
DI
Guys, you can have steaks or other cuts of meat however you like them, hamburger on the other hand should be well cooked to avoid any food borne pathogens. Hamburger has a large surface area to grow these little nasties, much more than steaks or roasts which is why you rarely hear of any problems with cuts of meat.
The problem arises from a few points in the food supply line, these are just a few but the more common sources of problems.
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improper evisceration of cattle (ie cutting the digestive tract and spilling or splashing the contents onto the meat.
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improper home food safety measures being taken. ie - have you ever used the same utensils and/or surface for cutting veggies after you prepared your meat, fish, chicken etc? If so you are in risk of getting sick.
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improper storage of meat cooked or uncooked.
Anyway - if you havent hunted, killed and cleaned your own supper then I can see why people would think its a messy process. But take this from a guy that has killed alot of 4 legged critters, once you get in there it’s actually a pretty clean process, minus the bullet hole of course.
.300 Weatherby Magnum ruleZ !
-Dave
[quote]KnightRT wrote:
While human waste is more than 50% bacteria, cow droppings are predominately undigested plant fiber.
DI[/quote]
That would be true IF the cattle were range fed, or grass fed. 99.9% of cattle slaughtered in the U.S. are grain fed - which means that their ration contains only 10-20% roughage. The rest is a combination of corn and grain sorghum - nice little environs for bacteria growth.