Of Course There’s Fecal Matter On Meat – You Know, Animals?

A group of American physicians is insisting that meat inspection lines should ensure that all animal carcasses should be free of animal matter. Well, not quite, but almost. They’re trying to insist that all animals sold in for human consumption should be entirely free of fecal matter. Which is something that’s just not going to happen, cannot happen.

Sure, we don’t want our chicken pieces to come presented on a pile of dung but as Paracelsus taught us all it’s the dose that is the poison. Taking apart, dismembering, a once living animal is going to mean taking out the guts. Guts are where fecal matter start out at least, there is just going to be some cross contamination.

Think slightly differently for a moment. We do indeed insist that people wear hats while preparing food these days. To stop hair getting into said food that we’re about to consume. But every human has flakes that come off their skin – it’s the major component of household dust, old bits of us. We do not demand that cooks wear full body suits to ensure that little bits if their dead skin do not get into our food. Because we have to be reasonable about these things. A little bit, well, we’ve just got to put up with it:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]It’s legal for your meat to have trace amounts of fecal matter. A group of doctors want to change that[/perfectpullquote]

Well, yes, but the important question is how much? Chopping up an animal just does mean that some of what was in the intestine gets onto the body of the product:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] This product “may contain feces.” That’s the label that one consumer rights advocacy group wants for the government to require meat distributors put on the food they send out to grocery stores.
The recommendation is tongue-in-cheek, Deborah Press, an attorney for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, tells CNN. The group represents 12,000 physicians whose mission includes promoting plant-based diets and ethical scientific research. [/perfectpullquote]

Ah, it’s a bunch of vegetarians trying to make life difficult for us omnivores. At which point we should emphasise that “how much?” point.

So, organic vegetables are grown using manure as the fertiliser. Manure is fecal matter. How much fecal matter is there left on the vegetable? And how does that compare to fecal matter upon industrially produced meat? More or less?