food watch: dropping like cows

March 2, 2008 at 3:39 pm | Posted in food watch, guest post, why vegan? | 4 Comments

we got baby, baby, baby spare ribs/roast beef/hot links/and more to give/cube steak/hot dogs/ribs tips, ooh/pork chops/turkey wings/and, chicken wings, too –moo & oink theme song, 1982

if you grew up on the south side of chicago, there was absolutely now way you didn’t know the lyrics to moo & oink’s viral classic jingle. when you see the commercial (below), you’ll know why the song would have the most vegan of us rapping along and breaking it down about all kinds of animal meat and waving for catfish.

if the past 12 months hasn’t seen the largest year in beef recalls in history, we should all be worried about just what the hell has been on the shelves for decades. i take that back – we should be worried anyway and wondering just how many weak, depleted, and crippled cows the humane society couldn’t film across the country. british news outlet times online makes a great point about just how important and unnoticed this mess is going by the policymakers, especially in an election year:

The beef recall has made a big noise in America, but it lacks the fire that would have attended a scandal of this scale in Europe. The hot topics of the day in America remain the economy and immigration…

So where is the political heat? This is an election year, and a regulatory system that allows potentially poisonous beef to be fed to kids, one would have thought, would be a hot topic for voters…

In the 2006 election cycle, the US livestock industry funded lobbyists to the tune of $4.5m (€3m), and contributed $5m to politicians. (source)

this article only focused on the most recent recall of 143 million pounds of dead cow that caused the plant (westland/hallmark meat co.) to go bankrupt and heads to roll in the usda, but in total over 160 million pounds were recalled in the past year alone.

if you’ve been feeling a carnivorous relapse coming on, be you warned!

i wonder how they’ll work all of that into the 2008 moo & oink jingle.

more articles about the recalls:

how weak cows enter food chain

beef recall expands to 5.7 million on e coli

contributed by nite*vision