Meat-eating Americans should increasingly be asking themselves that question, even as mad cow disease, meat processing violations, and massive recalls of animal products garner headlines. A survey by Public Citizen, the Government Accountability Project, and the American Federation of Government Employees, found that 46 percent of federal inspectors had been unable to recall meat laden with animal feces, vomit, metal shards, and other contamination. If that weren't bad enough, as of 1998, USDA declared safe for human consumption animal carcasses carrying a host of diseases, such as cancers, tumors, open sores, poultry pneumonia, infection arthritis, and diseases caused by intestinal worms.
Workers can simply cut off visibly affected areas, and the meat counts as approved.
Delmar Jones, a veteran federal food inspector from Renlap, Alabama, is so revolted by filth he sees on the job that he has refused to eat meat, he said in a mid-2000 news interview. Industry-driven demands for expedited slaughter and processing lines significantly worsen contamination. According to internal USDA documents, nearly 40 percent of supermarket-destined chickens from several processing plants in 2000 were contaminated with sores, scabs, and other defects that should have been detected on the processing line. Other cattle are approved that are stuffed with regurgitated food that was oozing out. Park Avenue Meats in the Bronx had rodents on-site.