Meaty Infections

In the articles "The illusion of control: industrialized agriculture, nature, and food safety" by Stuart, D and "E. Coli Path Shows Flaws in Beef Inspection" by Moss, M, both authors expose the flaws with the American Meat Processing Industry. As a result of a lack of attention to safety procedures and the desire to use technology to "solve" nature's problems, eating meat no longer is only a past time; it has become a source of concern for many Americans, such that many are becoming vegans simply to avoid this problem.

Although this is indeed unacceptable, from a business perspective, many of these firms have little resources to improve this situation. Rough competition from fellow competitors in addition to a collapsed economy have caused many of these meat processing companies to abandon costly safety procedures purely to cut back on costs and survive in the industry.

Nevertheless, although the development of technology is a problem in that it is encouraging us to abandon examination of the meat in preference of engineering it, future advancements and discoveries, particularly in the chemical field, may be developed in the near future to eliminate E-coli.

Questions I have based on these readings include:
- Is it possible for the USDA to inject more funding into the industry so that firms have more resources to conduct safety tests with?
- How long can E-coli survive on meat for?