Varegg wrote:
Shocking wrote:
huh?
Is there an E. Coli variant I haven't heard of which lives in corn or is it common practice to soak corn in feces prior to feeding it to the cow?
Huh ... the E.Coli is not in the corn ... when the cow eats grass (which it's digestive system is used too) it reduces the risk of E.Coli in the meat by about 80%.
Corn is only used to beef up the animal faster ...
Have you read or seen Food Inc.? ... it's a good start to learn more about an issue like this ... and many other issues about food ...
So if the e.coli is not in the corn...and it's not in the grass...it must already be in the cow (which is the case--the bacteria lives in all animals' intestinal tracts). So what the animal eats is irrelevant in the transmission. It's the handling of the meat and exposure to feces during the processing phase that increases or decreases the risk of e.coli transmission.
It's
when the animal eats it, not that it eats it at all. So they could be fed a mixture of corn and hay/grass (which is the norm here, btw), with it being predominantly the latter just prior to slaughter and it would reduce the acidity of the digestive tract, thus making the environment less friendly to e.coli development. But in the end (no pun intended), the
transmission of those bacteria to humans still occurs during the meat processing phase.