This morning’s USDA recall email:
Nebraska Firm Recalls Beef Tongues That Contain Prohibited Materials
Those “Prohibited Materials”? Tonsils.
What’s so wrong with (gag) beef tonsils?
Yep: Mad cow.
Tonsils are considered a specified risk material (SRM) and must be removed from cattle of all ages in accordance with FSIS regulations. SRMs are tissues that are known to contain the infective agent in cattle infected with Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), as well as materials that are closely associated with these potentially infective tissues.
Don’t eat your beef-tongues-with-tonsils with the following brand names:
“J.F. O’NEILL PACKING CO.,” “WHOLE FOODS NATURAL,” “WHOLE FOODS ORGANIC,” “PREMIER PROTEIN PARTNERS,” “MONTANA RANCH BRAND,” “GRASSLAND BEEF,” “AUSTIN MEATS,” “MORGAN RANCH,” “KOBE BEEF AMERICA,” “IMPERIAL WAGYU BEEF,” “BRAND ADVANTAGE WAGYU,” “BRAND ADVANTAGE PARTNERS,” “YAMAYA U.S.A.,” and “A.D. ROSENBLATT.”
I am now very, very unhungry. Perhaps forever.
P.S. Have you seen Food, Inc. yet? It’s out on DVD.
Whole Foods Organic buys beef from farms that feed beef to their cattle? That is some fucked up shit, please take notice of this yuppies. Whole Foods is run by a conservative businessman, and it operates exactly as other conservative businesses run: crooked.
Btw, I recommend Bob’s Quality Meats in Columbia City. Family run for decades.
You’re choosing now to get squeamish?
Carollani,
Not that I buy Whole Foods beef ever, but no where does this report say Whole Foods buys beef from farms that feed beef to their cattle. That’s just the assumed way BSE spreads. They don’t even know if these tonsils contain BSE. There are just certain parts of the animal (brain, tonsils, spinal cord) that would be at risk, if the animal was infected. So your aren’t allowed to sell those.
Who among the regular sloggers eats beef tongue? If you don’t eat it, don’t feign a lot of disgust now.
@5: Me? I like beef tongue a lot, especially in sandwiches. Damn goyim.
Zombieland, anyone?
You know that the heart disease will get you before JCD has a chance to, right?
Tongue is one of my favorite sandwich meats. As far as the no-tonsil rule goes, it falls into the just-in-case category of rules.
Technically, that’s vJCD, not JCD…
okay i learned this in biotech years ago so correct me if i’m wrong but mad cow or bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a “protein as pathogen” (as the section in my class was called) and can only be transmitted by consuming brain or spinal tissue… how do tonsils fall into this category?
Beef is also really bad for the environment: it takes a gallon of gasoline to make a pound of beef.
http://www.wstar.org/windstar/Education/…
It’s so tatsty, it tastes you back. First they came for the tacos de seso and I said nothing because I did not eat cow brains. Then they cam for the lingua burritos…
@8 isn’t CJD?
As if we needed another reason not to eat industrial meat, EVER.
Food system regulatory reform is the most neglected political issue in the world today. Health care reform? Sure, it’s important, but health starts with what you eat, and most of the food that gets shipped around the modern world is not fit for consumption. Modern feedlots and slaughterhouses would probably feel downright homey to Upton Sinclair.
Ugh.
Tongue is one of my favorite sandwich meats. As far as the no-tonsil rule goes, it falls into the just-in-case category of rules.
Never ever watch Food, Inc. It will make you not want to eat meat and become one of those vegans, and there are very very few restaurants in this city for those kinds of people. Like four.
@ 16, only if they all closed in the past four years since I left. There are plenty of vegan options in Seattle for those looking for them.
I agree: don’t seek out information if being informed means you’d be led to make positive changes.
It’s a vicious circle and you don’t not want that, my friend.
Or, you know, you just “don’t want that.”
That’s rich. You’re disgusted at beef tongue, yet you line up like cattle (yes, pun intended) in front of the hot-dog carts in front of the Comet and Chop Suey for tubes of cow anuses and other slaughterhouse floor sweepings. Really, it’s *all* parts of a dead animal, so you should be disgusted by every single bit that’s offered to you.
@ 20, this isn’t a vegetarian debate. Stay on topic.
@21: Right, and the topic is Tonsils are Gross, Pig Anuses are Awesome.
@16: the number’s closer to 20 vegan places in the greater Seattle area. And another ~20 vegetarian places besides.
And extra points for people who eat things like sausage, hotdogs and hamburgers and are only grossed out by the tongue/tonsil thing. Plenty of little bizarre remnants from multiple animals in multiple locations are mixed into spare meat.
Maybe it’s because it’s unrecognizable – out of sight, out of mind. I guess it goes along with an attitude of “don’t get informed if it means you might stop eating meat” 😉
@ 22, um, no. But the topic is about to become, Vegetarian threadjackers are rude asswipes…
@4 and @11 —
A common transmission route from cow-to-humans for these prions (the infectious agent) is via the bolt-gun method of cattle slaughter. The head is held, and a bolt is driven into the cows brain, killing it quickly(?).
This, however, causes brain matter to enter the blood stream. And contaminates the entire cow.
Prions — protein as pathogen — are proteins “folded badly”, and they infect by convincing other proteins to fold improperly also. [The way a protein is folded is a key determinant of what the protein actually does.] Once enough do, your brain looks like swiss cheese. They are not “killed” (as they are not alive) by any current disinfection methods (heat, chlorine, etc.)
Once we realize that our “meat supply” (yeck) is irrevocably contaminated with BSE (et. al.), clean meat with hit $25/lb. Or more. I hope. 🙂
Did you know deer out in the woods are coming down with variants of this? (How the f*ck are they getting it? One wonders.)
Vegetarianly Yours,
treacle
“Eating the tonsils” is the new “drinking the Kool-Aid.” Bon appetit!
@25,
It’s called chronic wasting disease. It occurs in wild populations of deer/elk/moose and mostly in areas (like rural Wisconsin, Colorado and Manitoba) away from feedlots. The transmission vector is unknown, but is likely bodily fluids such as feces, urine, and saliva. Deer didn’t get this from cattle feed.
BTW, there are many other prion diseases, like scrapie in sheep and various encephalopathies of cats, weasels, and humans. Some are congenital genetic abnormalities, some are contagious.They’re nothing new.