Is your Organic Chicken REALLY antibiotic FREE?

When a company states that they do not administer antibiotics to their chickens, what does that really mean?  It means that they are not injecting their chickens nor are they giving their flocks antibiotics as an independent product.

What it DOES NOT mean? It does not mean they providing an antibiotic free product to the market.  How is that you may ask? They are using a feed that has an antibiotic as a supplement in the feed. Thus they can use that feed and deny they are using antibiotics in their flocks.  EVEN more disturbing, they can actually claim their product is ANTIBIOTIC FREE.

 

The following is a report that was published in the Huffington Post in September of 2016.

By Brian Grow and P.J. Huffstutter

ATLANTA/CHICAGO, Sept 15 (Reuters) - Major U.S. poultry firms are administering antibiotics to their flocks far more pervasively than regulators realize, posing a potential risk to human health.

Internal records examined by Reuters reveal that some of the nation’s largest poultry producers routinely feed chickens an array of antibiotics - not just when sickness strikes, but as a standard practice over most of the birds’ lives.

In every instance of antibiotic use identified by Reuters, the doses were at the low levels that scientists say are especially conducive to the growth of so-called superbugs, bacteria that gain resistance to conventional medicines used to treat people. Some of the antibiotics belong to categories considered medically important to humans.

The internal documents contain details on how five major companies - Tyson Foods, Pilgrim’s Pride, Perdue Farms, George’s and Koch Foods - medicate some of their flocks.

The documented evidence of routine use of antibiotics for long durations was “astonishing,” said Donald Kennedy, a former U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

Kennedy, president emeritus of Stanford University, said such widespread use of the drugs for extended periods can create a “systematic source of antibiotic resistance” in bacteria, the risks of which are not fully understood. “This could be an even larger piece of the antibiotic-resistance problem than I had thought,” Kennedy said.

FEED TICKETS

Reuters reviewed more than 320 documents generated by six major poultry companies during the past two years. Called “feed tickets,” the documents are issued to chicken growers by the mills that make feed to poultry companies’ specifications. They list the names and grams per ton of each “active drug ingredient” in a batch of feed. They disclose the FDA-approved purpose of each medication. And they specify which stage in a chicken’s roughly six-week life the feed is meant for.

The feed tickets examined represent a fraction of the tens of thousands issued annually to poultry farms run by or for major producers. The confidential information they contain nonetheless extends well beyond what the U.S. government knows. Veterinary use of antibiotics is legal and has been rising for decades. But U.S. regulators don’t monitor how the drugs are administered on the farm - in what doses, for what purposes, or for how long. Made public here for the first time, the feed documents thus provide unique insight into how some major players use antibiotics.

The tickets indicate that two of the poultry producers - George’s and Koch Foods - have administered drugs belonging to the same classes of antibiotics used to treat infections in humans. The practice is legal. But many medical scientists deem it particularly dangerous, because it runs the risk of promoting superbugs that can defeat the life-saving human antibiotics.

In interviews, another major producer, Foster Poultry Farms, acknowledged that it too has used drugs that are in the same classes as antibiotics considered medically important to humans by the FDA.

About 10 percent of the feed tickets reviewed by Reuters list antibiotics belonging to medically important drug classes. But in recent presentations, scientists with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the use of any type of antibiotic, not just medically important ones, contributes to resistance. They said that whenever an antibiotic is administered, it kills weaker bacteria and enables the strongest to survive and multiply.

Frequent, sub-therapeutic use of antibiotics in low doses intensifies that effect, scientists and public health experts say. The risk: Any resulting superbugs might also develop cross-resistance to medically important antibiotics.

According to the feed tickets reviewed, low doses of antibiotics were part of the standard diet for some flocks at five companies: Tyson, Pilgrim’s, Perdue, George’s and Koch.

“These are not targeted uses aimed at specific bugs for defined duration. They’re multiple, repeat shotgun blasts that will certainly kill off weaker bugs and promote the stronger, more resistant ones,” said Keeve Nachman, director of the food production and public health program at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health.

“HIGHLY IMPORTANT” DRUGS

This month, Perdue Farms announced that it had stopped applying the antibiotic gentamicin to eggs in chicken hatcheries. Gentamicin is a member of an antibiotic class considered “highly important” in human medicine by the FDA. The company said it wants “to move away from conventional antibiotic use” because of “growing consumer concern and our own questions about the practice.”

The move won’t change what Perdue feeds its chickens, however. Some of its feed has contained low levels of one antibiotic, feed tickets show. Perdue said it only uses antibiotics that aren’t considered medically important by the FDA, and at some farms, it uses no antibiotics at all.

“We recognized that the public was concerned about the potential impact of the use of these drugs on their ability to effectively treat humans,” Bruce Stewart-Brown, Perdue’s senior vice president of food safety and quality, said when the hatchery policy was announced.

The poultry industry’s lobby takes issue with the concerns of government and academic scientists, saying there is little evidence that bacteria which do become resistant also infect people.

“Several scientific, peer reviewed risk assessments demonstrate that resistance emerging in animals and transferring to humans does not happen in measurable amounts, if at all,” said Tom Super, spokesman for the National Chicken Council. He said using antibiotics to prevent diseases in flocks “is good, prudent veterinary medicine. Prevention of the disease prevents unnecessary suffering and prevents the overuse of potentially medically important antibiotics in treatment of sick birds.”

Poultry producers began using antibiotics in the 1940s, not long after scientists discovered that penicillin, streptomycin and chlortetracycline helped control outbreaks of disease in chickens. The drugs offered an added benefit: They kept the birds’ digestive tracts healthy, and chickens were able to gain more weight without eating more food.

Over the years, the industry’s use of antibiotics grew. Early on, independent scientists warned that bacteria would inevitably develop resistance to those antibiotics, especially when the drugs were administered in low doses. In 1976, a landmark study by microbiologist Stuart Levy showed that potentially deadly bacteria in poultry were developing resistance to tetracyclines and other antibiotics. The resistant bacteria, E. Coli, were then moving from poultry to people.

That is when the FDA first tried to rein in drug use in food animals. The agricultural and pharmaceutical industries resisted, viewing low-level antibiotic use as a way to produce meat more quickly and cheaply.

Today, 80 percent of all antibiotics used in America are given not to people, but to livestock.

SCANT REVIEW

About 390 medications containing antibiotics have been approved to treat illness, stave off disease and promote growth in farm animals. But the FDA has reviewed just 7 percent of those drugs for their likelihood of creating antibiotic-resistant superbugs, a Reuters data analysis found. [IDn:xxxxx]

The widespread use of antibiotics worries public health authorities. In a report this year, the World Health Organization called antibiotic resistance “a problem so serious it threatens the achievements of modern medicine.” The annual cost to battle antibiotic-resistant infections is estimated at $21 billion to $34 billion in the United States alone, the WHO said.

Each year, about 430,000 people in the United States become ill from food-borne bacteria that resist conventional antibiotics, according to a July report by the CDC. Overall, the CDC estimates that 2 million people are sickened in the United States annually with infections resistant to antibiotics. At least 23,000 people die.

“That’s the number we are certain of. The actual number is higher,” said Steve Solomon, director of the CDC’s Office of Antimicrobial Resistance.

This year, federal investigators tracking a salmonella outbreak traced virulent strains of the pathogen to chickens raised by Foster Farms, the largest poultry producer on the West Coast.

Investigators identified seven strains of Salmonella Heidelberg that had sickened at least 634 people across the United States and Puerto Rico this year and last. More than 200 of those people were hospitalized, according to the CDC. In July, Foster Farms issued a recall of some chicken products.

When epidemiologists examined 68 of the Salmonella Heidelberg cases linked to Foster Farms, they found that two-thirds of the bacteria were resistant to at least one antibiotic, according to the CDC. Half of these superbugs were impervious to drugs in at least three different classes of antibiotics.

In an effort to stop the spread of resistant bacteria, the FDA has issued voluntary guidelines to regulate antibiotic use by producers of poultry and other livestock. The agency says it also inspects the mills where animal feed is made. It considers those inspections to be a “more effective” use of its resources than examining how farmers administer feed.

Not until 2016 does the FDA plan to gather data about antibiotic use on farms, said Craig Lewis, a veterinary medical officer with the agency. Today, “none of us have an idea first-hand of what’s going on” at the farm level, Lewis said this summer, at a public meeting on antibiotic resistance.

Super, the National Chicken Council spokesman, said the information on feed tickets “is available to FDA, the regulators, whenever they want to go see it.”

“WAKE-UP CALL”

Still, companies are reluctant to discuss how they medicate their flocks.

One, Pilgrim’s Pride, said it would take legal action against Reuters unless the news agency gave the company access to Pilgrim’s feed tickets that reporters had reviewed. Reuters declined to do so.

The tickets show that Pilgrim’s added low doses of the antibiotics bacitracin and monensin, individually or in combination, to every ration fed to a flock grown early this year. Neither drug is classified as medically important by the FDA, although bacitracin commonly is used to prevent human skin infections.

The Colorado-based company wouldn’t address questions about its use of antibiotics. Its general counsel, Nicholas White, called the contents of its tickets “confidential business information.”

U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York, said the feed tickets substantiate what she long suspected: “that the overuse of antibiotics on many chicken farms is rampant.”

Gillibrand has been pushing for regulators to more aggressively monitor low-level doses of antibiotics. Now, Gillibrand said, she hopes “the FDA will use the feed-ticket data obtained by Reuters as a wake-up call to re-evaluate their approach to the regulation of antibiotic use in food production.”

So does Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Connecticut, a member of a House subcommittee overseeing food safety. Told of the information in the feed tickets, DeLauro called on the FDA to “implement tighter restrictions on antibiotic usage.”

DUAL EFFECTS

All the poultry giants state publicly that they use antibiotics for the limited purpose of keeping chickens healthy.

But the feed tickets, which list the medications included in chicken feed, highlight a second effect of many of the drugs: bulking up the birds.

Some of the tickets reviewed for this article state that the antibiotics promote feed efficiency or weight gain in chickens. The FDA requires companies to list growth promotion on feed tickets whenever feed includes antibiotics that have been approved for that purpose.

Reuters found eight different antibiotics listed on the tickets it reviewed. The tickets come from a scattering of farms across the United States - in Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, Virginia and Washington State, among other locations.

George’s Inc, a poultry company based in Springdale, Arkansas, issued feed tickets last year to a chicken grower in Virginia. The tickets show that the antibiotics tylosin and virginiamycin were administered solely for “increased rate of weight gain.”

Tylosin belongs to a class of antibiotics the FDA considers “critically important” in human medicine, the most crucial of three ranks of sensitive drugs. Virginiamycin is part of a class in the FDA’s middle rank, “highly important.”

Other George’s Inc feed tickets, given to two growers in Virginia this year, show the antibiotics bacitracin and narasin and a non-antibiotic drug called nicarbazin were included in every poultry ration in different combinations until shortly before slaughter. Bacitracin can promote growth.

George’s said in a statement: “Occasionally (when necessary to control certain pathogens) appropriate FDA approved medications are utilized to prevent, control or treat specific diseases.” It declined to answer detailed questions.

At Tyson Foods, two feed tickets sent by the company to two Mississippi farms show that bacitracin and the non-antibiotic nicarbazin were among the drugs mixed into the feed. The tickets state the drug combination is “for use in the prevention of coccidiosis in broiler flocks, growth promotion and feed efficiency.” Coccidiosis is a common intestinal ailment.

Tyson, also based in Springdale, Arkansas, said it does not use bacitracin to promote growth, only to prevent disease. The FDA requires companies to list growth promotion on tickets if medications have that effect, Tyson said. The company said that its feed mixture changes throughout the year. In some seasons, it said, the feed doesn’t include bacitracin and nicarbazin.

At Koch Foods Inc, a Chicago-based supplier to fast-food chain KFC Corp, feed tickets contradict a statement on the Koch website about antibiotic use.

Until Aug. 27, the website said Koch Foods uses antibiotics for the narrow purpose of protecting the health of its chickens. “We do not administer antibiotics at growth promotion doses,” the statement read in part. “No antibiotics of human significance are used to treat our birds.”

Koch feed tickets dated from Nov. 30, 2011, through July 20, 2014, indicate otherwise. They list low-dose amounts of five different types of antibiotics in feed given to flocks at one Alabama farm. One was virginiamycin, in a class considered “highly important” to fighting infections in humans.

In 34 of the 55 Koch Foods feed tickets that Reuters examined, antibiotics at low-dose levels were listed “for increased rate of weight gain,” a related growth-promotion use called “improved feed efficiency,” or both. Each of those feed tickets also said the antibiotics were for the prevention of coccidiosis, another bacterial infection, or both.

Koch Foods changed the website after being asked by Reuters about its use of virginiamycin. “I regret the wording mistake on that particular letter” on the website, said Mark Kaminsky, Koch’s chief financial officer. The company said it is required by the FDA to list certain drugs as growth promoters if they have that effect; Koch says it does not use them for that purpose.

Koch said it has no plans to discontinue the use of virginiamycin, which it says may be used to prevent a common intestinal infection in chicken.

KFC U.S. said in a statement: “KFC’s supply partners must adhere to our strict standards and specifications, which in some cases are more stringent than the FDA’s regulations.” A spokeswoman didn’t address detailed questions about antibiotic use by Koch Foods and KFC’s other chicken suppliers.

HEALTHIER CHICKENS?

The experience of one grower raises questions about whether preventive use of antibiotics has a meaningful effect on the health of chicken.

Craig Watts, who grows chicken for Perdue, says he sees little difference in outcomes for the birds he raises on feed containing an antibiotic and those he grows for the company’s antibiotic-free line.

Perdue mixes the antibiotic narasin into feed given to chickens in the company’s antibiotic-fed line. Its antibiotic-free line contains antimicrobial drugs that kill micro-organisms, but none that the FDA defines as an antibiotic, according to Perdue feed tickets shown by Watts. None of the drugs listed by Perdue on the feed tickets is considered medically important for humans.

Watts owns C&A Farms, about 20 miles north of Dillon, South Carolina. Since 2012, he has raised five antibiotic-free flocks for Perdue and seven flocks that received low doses of the antibiotic narasin, according to his records.

The mortality rates of the two flock types were nearly identical. About 900 birds died, per house, on the four-house farm. Flocks that received antibiotics and those that didn’t both hit Perdue’s target weight of about 4.25 pounds per bird.

Perdue sees “similar” performance among birds fed antibiotics and those that do not receive the drugs, said Stewart-Brown, the Perdue official overseeing food safety. “We feel our current two approaches are both very responsive to public health concerns about antibiotic use in poultry.”

Perdue still uses antibiotics in some cases, because antibiotic-free flocks are “more expensive to run and more difficult to manage effectively,” Stewart-Brown said. The production complex served by Watts’ farm recently transitioned to all antibiotic-free flocks.

TRACKING AN OUTBREAK

One poultry giant whose antibiotic use has come into question is Foster Farms, based in Livingston, California. Its experience shows the difficulty of pinpointing when and how a bacteria turns into a superbug, say federal investigators.

Beginning last year, a salmonella outbreak spread across Oregon, Washington, California and 27 other states and territories. Federal investigators later linked the outbreak to chickens raised by Foster Farms and processed at a trio of its slaughterhouses in central California, according to USDA and CDC officials.

The scope of the outbreak reflected Foster Farms’ vast scale. Its operations in California’s Central Valley date to 1939, when Max and Verda Foster borrowed $1,000 against a life insurance policy and invested in an 80-acre farm.

Today, Foster owns large tracts of California farmland, chicken hatcheries in Colorado and train cars that haul grain from the Midwest. An estimated one of 10 chickens eaten in the United States is hatched, raised and slaughtered by Foster Farms, according to industry officials. The company dominates the chicken market west of the Rocky Mountains.

As the CDC studied what investigators informally called the “Foster Farms Outbreak,” researchers soon made a troubling discovery. Some of the Salmonella Heidelberg strains linked to Foster products proved resistant to a variety of antibiotics, the CDC concluded. Some of those drugs belonged to the same classes as penicillin and chlortetracycline, or CTC.

Some questions remain. Government investigators didn’t determine how the Salmonella Heidelberg traced to Foster Farms became resistant to antibiotics, and didn’t trace the resistant bacteria to specific farms. They didn’t examine Foster feed tickets from the outbreak period to see which antibiotics the company was using and how the drugs were being administered.

Reuters asked to see Foster Farms’ feed tickets from that period; the company didn’t respond to that request.

Foster Farms said it commissioned research that yielded findings very different from the CDC’s. The company declined to share the study. It summarized the research by saying scientists found no antibiotic resistance in two dozen salmonella samples collected from Foster Farms in 2012.

A CDC spokeswoman said the agency is aware that Foster Farms sponsored a study and has asked to review it, but hasn’t received a copy.

“BIOLOGY AT WORK”

Foster Farms told Reuters it has administered CTC and penicillin at times, but selectively, not as part of standard feed. Foster said it had used CTC “as needed” to fight bacterial infections. It declined to say where or when it administered CTC. The company said it still uses penicillin to treat sick birds, but only “in critical situations when flocks are exposed to fatal diseases.” Foster doesn’t use antibiotics as growth promoters, it said.

CDC official Robert Tauxe helped investigate the outbreak. “Use of chlortetracycline could have contributed to the resistance patterns we saw” in the Salmonella Heidelberg, said Tauxe. “Penicillin, too.”

On July 11, the CDC said the Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak had ended. The USDA said it is monitoring the company’s new salmonella-prevention efforts. Agency officials and Foster’s chief veterinarian, Bob O’Connor, said the measures are working.

The company has reduced salmonella-infection rates on chicken meat from its California facilities to less than 3 percent, O’Connor said, far below the national average of 25 percent.

Despite the gains, O’Connor said the challenge of eradicating salmonella in the chicken industry remains. “For the people who wanted a silver-bullet-type story, there isn’t one,” O’Connor said. “With salmonella, we’re not going to be able to say, ‘It’s over.’”

David Acheson, a former senior medical officer for the USDA and the FDA, now serves on a food safety advisory board for Foster Farms. He said the board never examined Foster’s use of antibiotics and whether its practices could have spawned superbugs.

“Does anyone know that it happened? No. Is it possible? Could it have happened? Yes,” Acheson said. “We know that antibiotic use, irrelevant of what you are treating, whether it be human or animal, can increase the likelihood of resistance. It’s biology at work.” (Reporting by Brian Grow in Atlanta and Fairmont, North Carolina and P.J. Huffstutter in Chicago and Livingston, California. Additional reporting by Michael Erman and Eric Johnson. Edited by David Greising and Blake Morrison.)

modern chicken production.jpg

Is ORGANIC food SAFE?

This article reminds us that LOCAL is better than A LABEL !!!!!!

 

http://expand-your-consciousness.com/organic-food-from-china-found-to-be-highly-contaminated/?t=MAM

 

“Organic” Food From China Found To Be Highly Contaminated

December 12, 2016

With more and more people learning about the importance of eating healthy and safe produce, consumer demand for all things “organic” has skyrocketed. In the US alone, annual organic food sales have grown by 20% and the increased demand is significantly outpacing domestic supplies, forcing many grocers and food vendors to look internationally to keep their businesses stocked. Most of these organic imports are grown in the European Union, where organic standards are weaker than those of the US. However, many of these “organic” products are from China, whose food industry standards for safety and quality are notoriously low. Much of this “organic” produce grown in China is so unsafe, that the farmers who grow it won’t eat it themselves. Isn’t that the whole point of choosing organic in the first place?

It turns out that much of the food labelled “organic” was never grown with the intention of being organic, but rather as a means to circumvent China’s reputation for substandard produce. US Customs personnel often reject entire shipments of food from China due to the addition of dangerous and unsavory additives, the presence of drug residues, mislabeling, or the poor hygienic state of the food. In an effort to get around these bulk rejections of food, some Chinese food exporters have taken to labeling their products “organic,” especially those foods that appear dirty or unusual. In addition, the “organic” label in China has no meaning as collusion between the government and manufacturers has led to rampant mislabeling, and China’s government has no established system for determining what is or is not organic.

Even if “organically grown” food from China was in fact that, the quality of the water used in the production of food intended for export is so contaminated that a person could fall ill just by handling it. Much of China’s industrial-scale agriculture is found along the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers, both of which are extremely polluted. This is because thousands upon thousands of Chinese factories also line these same rivers, adding their chemical waste to the same water used to irrigate the country’s food supply. In one such recent case, a chemical fertilizer plant dumped such excessive amounts of ammonia into the Fu river, a tributary of the Yangtze river, that an estimated 110 tons of dead fish had to be removed. However, the ammonia-laden river continued to be used for industrial and agricultural use.

Other chemicals and heavy metals have been found in very high and unsafe amounts in these rivers, as well as the food produced with that water. Perchlorate, a precursor to rocket fuel, has been found in China’s sewage as well as its rice, bottled drinking water, and milk. It is throughout the entire water supply and contaminate any would-be organic produce. Perchlorate is an endocrine-disruptor and is also toxic. It can cause improper regulation of the metabolism, thyroid problems, as well as developmental problems in children and infants. Does that sound healthy and organic? Obviously not. Luckily, some of China’s “organic” products are more likely to be contaminated than others. Fish, chicken, apples, rice, mushrooms, green peas, black pepper, and garlic were found to be the most contaminated foods from China and are to be avoided. As always, the only way to be completely sure that your food is free of chemicals and additives is to grow it yourself. Vegetable gardens can fit in even the smallest of spaces, are attractive, help local insects (including bees), and can provide you and your family with delicious food that is completely safe.

This article, by Whitney Webb, (“Organic” Food From China Found To Be Highly Contaminated) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to the author and TrueActivist.com. Dead fish being removed after a fertilizer factory dumped huge amounts of ammonia into the Fu river      Credit – NYT

Do you REALLY know where your beef comes from? A Mexican fed-lot?

There are several aspects that are important to the safety and quality of the food that you serve to your family.

1. The way the animal is fed.  This aspect determines what is in the meat you and your family consume. Does it have hormones, steroids, antibiotics etc in your meat.

2. The way the animal is harvested and processed. This determines how safe the food is from contamination.

3. Where the animal is raised, harvested and processed.  Local is ALWAYS better. The closer to the source the better, healthier, safer and more accountable you can hold those in your families food chain.

 

USDA: U.S. importing more beef from Mexico

By Rachel J. Johnson and Amy D. Hagerman USDA January 19, 2012 | 2:16 pm EST

U.S. beef imports from Mexico have at least doubled in each of the last 2 years, continuing an upward trend that began in 2003 (fig. 1). The impetus for the increased imports is beef from Mexican Tipo Inspección Federal (TIF) plants and increased production of grain-fed beef, the quality and type of beef U.S. consumers prefer. The increase in coarse grain domestic feed use in Mexico, in addition to increased exports of U.S. feed and distillers’ grains, is evidence of the shift toward fed beef in Mexico.

Beef imports from Mexico in 2010 totaled 107 million pounds, making Mexico the fifth largest exporter of beef to the United States. Through November 2011, imports of beef from Mexico increased by 46 percent over the same period in 2010. The majority of beef imported by the United States from all sources is processing beef, which is mixed with trim for grinding in the United States. Over the last 10 years, on average over 86 percent of beef imports to the United States have been boneless, fresh, or frozen meat cuts, much of which is used in processing. This category of imports has increased from Mexico—by nearly 88 percent in 2010—but is paralleled by increasing imports of bone-in beef cuts as well. Of the bone-in beef cuts imported to the United States in 2010, which excluded processed fresh beef, nearly 42 percent were supplied by Mexico. However, it is notable that beef imports from Mexico still serve a very small portion of overall US beef consumption.


There are two reasons for the increasing exports of Mexican beef to the United States: (1) an increase in the number of TIF plants in Mexico (federally inspected slaughter plants meeting standards similar to those in the United States), and (2) an increase in production of grain-fed beef in Mexico, the quality of beef that most often meets the tastes and preferences of U.S. consumers. For meat to be moved across State borders in Mexico or to be exported to the United States, it must be inspected at the Federal level. When the Mexican inspection program began 60 years ago, 15 TIF establishments were operational; that number has grown to 365 TIF plants in 27 States in Mexico, rising almost exponentially in the past few years. In 2010, 75 TIF slaughter establishments were certified, including some preexisting facilities that were converted to adhere to TIF standards. These efforts are being driven by initiatives in Mexico to produce higher quality meat products, become more competitive in the global marketplace, and capture gains from exports. The Secretariat of Agriculture, Livestock, Rural Development, Fisheries and Food (SAGARPA) announced this year that another 100 active slaughter establishments will become certified TIF plants (http://www.sagarpa.gob.mx/saladeprensa/boletines2/Paginas/2011B600.aspx). Through October 2011, Mexico exported beef products valued at $452 million, with 60 percent of that earned from beef sent to the United States.
 

The increase in TIF plants has resulted in an increase in boxed beef and higher quality, exportable beef cuts. Since TIF plant production of boxed beef is increasing as it replaces traditional hot-carcass (with viscera) marketing on a value basis, not only is there a greater supply of the primal and sub-primal cuts that are in greater demand by U.S. consumers compared with Mexican consumers— such as tenderloin (filete), loin (lomo), sirloin (aguayón), ribs (costillas), and short ribs (agujas cortas), for example—but there is more trim available for processing. Trim is also in greater demand in the United States relative to the Mexican market, where beef from culled animals is not ground but is consumed as muscle cuts. Mexican consumers tend to prefer the leaner cuts of beef, such as the chuck and round, with little or no marbling, since the traditional grass-fed beef production system in Mexico produces leaner beef.

Although Mexican consumers still prefer traditional cuts and processing methods, changing preferences in certain areas have resulted in growing demand in Mexico for the flavor and other attributes of grain-fed beef. As a result, increasing numbers of cattle are being fed through semi-intensive and intensive feedlot operations (table 1). One limitation to Mexico’s beef production is forage availability, but with greater numbers of cattle finished in the feedlot rather than on pastures, more forage resources are being released for cow-calf production This, in turn, will allow for greater total beef production in Mexico. Grain-fed beef is still produced in a somewhat less intensive system compared with U.S. feedlot production—feeding periods are shorter and carcasses are considerably leaner, with little or no marbling—but this is still a significant shift from the traditionally grass-fed beef production systems where animals have yellow fat and are often 3-4 years old at slaughter.

In addition, feed consumption of coarse grains in Mexico has trended up over the last couple of decades, supporting the expanding Mexican beef production and feedlot industry (fig. 2). The increase in dried distillers’ grains (DDGs) exported to Mexico in recent years (fig. 3) has also supported the increase in Mexican cattle feeding.

An increase in TIF processing capacity, changes in beef demand in Mexico and the increase in Mexican grain-fed cattle for slaughter are resulting in a greater supply of beef available and of interest to the U.S. import market. The Mexican beef industry continues to improve infrastructure and marketing channels but still faces challenges in competing for inputs, feed sources, and forage and land availability from domestic crop production. Mexico has the potential to keep growing as a supplier of beef to the United States as the changes in demand, cattle feeding, and slaughter in recent years are sustained.

Raise chicken in the US, ship to China for processing, Ship back here to our grocery stores

How can it be less expensive to send chicken half way across the globe, have them processed and then shipped half way around the world back to our grocery stores?                                                                                               The only way is to cut corners.  Where do they cut corners? I do not know, nor do I want to find out !!!!!!!!

 

 

USDA to Allow Chickens From U.S. to Be Shipped to China for Processing and Back to U.S. for Consumption

By Erin Elizabeth -

July 13, 2015

China Processed Chicken

Scores of Americans are in an uproar since Food Safety News revealed the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will soon allow U.S. chickens to be sent to China for processing before being shipped back to the states for human consumption.This arrangement is especially disturbing given China’s subpar food safety record and the fact that there are no plans to station on-site USDA inspectors at Chinese plants.

Also, American consumers won’t know which brands of chicken are processed in China because there’s no requirement to label it as such.

It’s Already Done With Your Seafood

To ease concerns, lobbyists and chicken industry proponents argue no U.S. company will ever ship chicken to China for processing because it wouldn’t work economically.

“Economically, it doesn’t make much sense,” said Tom Super, spokesman for the National Chicken Council, in a recent interview with the Houston Chronicle. “Think about it: A Chinese company would have to purchase frozen chicken in the U.S., pay to ship it 7,000 miles, unload it, transport it to a processing plant, unpack it, cut it up, process/cook it, freeze it, repack it, transport it back to a port, then ship it another 7,000 miles. I don’t know how anyone could make a profit doing that.”

Yet, a similar process is already being used for U.S. seafood.

According to the Seattle Times, domestically caught Pacific salmon and Dungeness crab are being processed in China and shipped back to the U.S. because of significant cost savings.

“There are 36 pin bones in a salmon and the best way to remove them is by hand,” said Charles Bundrant, founder of Trident, which ships about 30 million pounds of its 1.2 billion-pound annual harvest to China for processing. “Something that would cost us $1 per pound labor here, they get it done for 20 cents in China.”

Low Pay, Poor Safety Record

Bureau of Labor Statistics data estimates that American poultry processors are paid roughly $11 per hour on average. In China, reports have circulated that the country’s chicken workers can earn significantly less—$1 to 2 per hour—which casts doubt on Super’s economic feasibility assessment.

China’s food safety system, which is said to be decades behind America’s, is highly questionable given some of the more recent food safety scandals that have surfaced in the country:

Food Safety News aims to spread awareness of the pending USDA agreement and stop Chinese-processed chicken from ever reaching supermarkets or school lunchrooms.

 

Buy Local

7 benefits of eating local foods

Eating locally grown foods has many benefits for the consumer, grower and the community.

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Rita Klavinski, Michigan State University Extension

Having the option to purchase locally grown food has many benefits. Michigan State University Extension suggests the following benefits of buying locally grown food.

  • Locally grown food is full of flavor. When grown locally, the crops are picked at their peak of ripeness versus being harvested early in order to be shipped and distributed to your local retail store. Many times produce at local markets has been picked within 24 hours of your purchase.
  • Eating local food is eating seasonally. Even though we wish strawberries were grown year round in Michigan, the best time to eat them is when they can be purchased directly from a local grower. They are full of flavor and taste better than the ones available in the winter that have traveled thousands of miles and picked before they were ripe.
  • Local food has more nutrients. Local food has a shorter time between harvest and your table, and it is less likely that the nutrient value has decreased. Food imported from far-away states and countries is often older, has traveled and sits in distribution centers before it gets to your store.
  • Local food supports the local economy. The money that is spent with local farmers and growers all stays close to home and is reinvested with businesses and services in your community.
  • Local food benefits the environment. By purchasing locally grown foods you help maintain farmland and green and/or open space in your community.
  • Local foods promote a safer food supply. The more steps there are between you and your food’s source the more chances there are for contamination. Food grown in distant locations has the potential for food safety issues at harvesting, washing, shipping and distribution.
  • Local growers can tell you how the food was grown. You can ask what practices they use to raise and harvest the crops. When you know where your food comes from and who grew it, you know a lot more about that food.

As the growing season starts and gets into full swing, you should think about how you can add more locally grown foods to your menus. By doing so you are supporting the many benefits of locally grown food.

MSU Extension has educators working across Michigan who provide community food systems educational programming and assistance. For more information, you can contact an educator by conducting a search with MSU Extension’s Find an Expertsearch tool and using the keywords, “community food systems.”

This article was published by Michigan State University Extension. For more information, visit http://www.msue.msu.edu.