Meat & Poo

[keepyourkiltdown]

I was searching to see if the vein in the shrimp really -was- feces. I have heard such a thing from multiple people and needless to say, after eating shirmp pasta, I was a little concerned.

I found a message board (www.reddit.com, http://reddit.com/info/zsto/comments) and I couldn't really find much of an answer (it turned in to a meat-eater/vegan fight) though I did see this response:

"That's not nearly as gross as what you're eating when you eat chicken or beef. Most chicken is soaked in uric acid for hours (chicken piss and shit) before it gets to your grocery store. That's what makes it soft and fall right off the bone.

When a cow is killed in a modern meat plant and cut apart, the colon often becomes pierced spilling pounds of shit everywhere. It's one of the reasons they say you should cook your meat well before eating it...you're still eating shit, it just doesn't have as much bacteria as it did before.

Interestingly, aged beef is more expensive than fresh meat. It gives the bacteria in the shit time to break the muscle tissue down so it's softer.

If you take the time to do the research, it's enough to make you sick."

Now, I'm not completely certain if this was a serious post, or just some pissed of Vegan using false propaganda.

Can someone please clear this up for me?

[Seburiel]

I worked at the Tyson chicken plant in Seguin, Texas right after I graduated from High School, and, while I have a lot against Tyson Chicken, I found that their handling of the chicken -post mortem- was very clean and safe.

The procedure, as I recall it:

chickens unloaded from trucks and hung on racks which dipped them in electrified water, which 'stunned' them, their throats were cut, and, in transit to the butchering department, their feathers, feet, and heads were removed, and they were washed, then dumped into a bin to be 'rehung' (That's the department I was working in, rehanging) which is simply being picked up and placed onto a conveyor to be moved along to butchery. There was always a USDA representative/agent on the site, ensuring that no birds that touched the ground were allowed to continue along the process (they were incinerated).
While I could watch the butchering of the birds during slow moments in rehanging, I am not certain what all was going on, but there were no uric acid baths.

[llewtrah]

If slaughterhouse methods are adhered to, there will be no faecal contamination of the muscle meat. The carcase can be power-hosed. Ageing it allows flavour to develop, but it isn't due to faeces on the meet. I'm guessing the writer was confusing it with hanging game (pheasant etc) where the guts are still inside and the bacteria do indeed get to work - but within the gut, not in the meat!

Chicken meat is soft because the birds grow fast, don't get a chance to use their muscles and are slaughtered at a young age (compare the texture to that of slower maturing free range birds). There are meat tenderisers used in in the meat, rather than poultry, industry, but these involve injecting the animal prior to slaughter and allowing the bloodstream to deliver the tenderiser to the muscles (book reference: The Meat Machine).

The OP's quotes are propaganda. I rarely eat meat and when I do I look for free range and humanely handled, but I don't go spouting misinformed anti-carnivore nonsense at people who do eat it.

AIUI, in the UK we are moving away from the electric bath/throat slit method of poultry slaughter for humane, rather than cleanliness, reasons. Chickens aren't uniform in size and some don't get stunned by the electric bath, they may also not get their throats slit. If the operator isn't vigilant, some chickens go into de-feathering still conscious. Gas slaughter is now recommended and is the method used here for ducks and geese. Once dead, the birds are hung up and processed.

There are rogue operations "laundering" condemned parts back into the human food chain. These are often cited in anti-meat arguments, but aren't representative of the whole meat industry.

[Sister Ray]

I think most meat is so soft because the animals aren't allowed to roam much.

edit: spanked by llewtrah.

Sister "this sounds like a particular conspiracy theory I've heard..." Ray

[Hyper Squirrel]

Best. Thread. Title. EVER.

Originally Posted by keepyourkiltdown

I was searching to see if the vein in the shrimp really -was- feces. I have heard such a thing from multiple people and needless to say, after eating shirmp pasta, I was a little concerned.

I have been wondering the same thing! I did some research and found that that dark vein is in truth the shrimps digestive tract. However I do not know if it actually contains poo or not.

From this website.

Raw, peeled shrimp from which the vein has been removed are called peeled and deveined or P&D. The vein is part of a shrimp's intestinal tract. It is often gritty, which is why it's sometimes called a"sand vein." In some shrimp the vein is thick and dark, in others it is barely noticeable. The difference is due to the shrimp's feed. In general, the U.S. market prefers shrimp without veins; although in other cultures it's very acceptable. The appearance and texture of the vein are an aesthetic consideration, not a health concern.

[RLS]

I guess it comes down to the question of when do you consider food has turned to poo. At some point in time passing thru the digestive tract the food any animal eats becomes poo. Thus it is more than likely poo. Thus I only eat devined shrimp.

[Izzy Quigley]

Originally Posted by RLS

I guess it comes down to the question of when do you consider food has turned to poo. At some point in time passing thru the digestive tract the food any animal eats becomes poo. Thus it is more than likely poo. Thus I only eat devined shrimp.

(TMI) Non-poo can actually be a lot more unpleasant than poo. When I dissected a cat for anatomy class, the partially-digested food near the end of the small intestine was slimier and worse-smelling than the fecal matter near the end of the large intestine, since the large intestine absorbs water and dries out solid waste before it leaves the body.

[charlie23]

Somehow I take it none of you have killed and butchered your own meat ?
ah, the wonders of the modern age...

[llewtrah]

Originally Posted by charlie23

Somehow I take it none of you have killed and butchered your own meat ?
ah, the wonders of the modern age...

I butcher roadkilled animals. Shame to waste it.

[charlie23]

I butcher roadkilled animals. Shame to waste it.

My kinda girl

[FullMetal]

Originally Posted by keepyourkiltdown

When a cow is killed in a modern meat plant and cut apart, the colon often becomes pierced spilling pounds of shit everywhere. It's one of the reasons they say you should cook your meat well before eating it...you're still eating shit, it just doesn't have as much bacteria as it did before.

interesting aside to this comment...

can we safely say that these pounds of shit are more commonly refered to as cow manure?

Can we also safely state that cow manure is used as fertilizer for growing vegetables in many parts? Especially organic farms.

Isn't cow manure spilled all over the vegetables while they're growing? So is eating vegetables grown with cow manure still eating shit?

Just curious

[Eddylizard]

I don't know about cow manure, but horse manure (for gardens etc) is mixed with horse urine and straw, and matured for several months before it is suitable for use as a fertiliser. IIRC that's something to do with the ammonia content in fresh manure burning the leaves of developing plants. Maybe the microbes exceed their food source and die off. I don't know.

Even if our meat supplies were routinely coated in faeces and urine, which I doubt, the number of food poisoning cases each year is extremely small compared to the amount of meat consumed. Really not a worry.

[Morrigan]

Originally Posted by charlie23

Somehow I take it none of you have killed and butchered your own meat ?
ah, the wonders of the modern age...

Deer, rabbits and squirrells.

Morrigan

[llewtrah]

Originally Posted by charlie23

My kinda girl

I don't often eat meat, but roadkill is both free range and free. It's mainly rabbits and gamebirds here, I'm hoping for a deer. I humanely dispatch anything I find that is injured, but not dead. I once found a dead pony (not a pet pony), but there was already a highways truck dealing with it. I am not sure how I'd've fitted a pony in my car, but it would have kept us going for weeks and the skin would have been worth preserving.

[keepyourkiltdown]

Originally Posted by Hyper Squirrel

Best. Thread. Title. EVER.

Thank you. I do try my darndest.

[lynnejanet]

The idea that the vein in shrimp is part of its digestive tract doesn't really bother me. If you really insist on thinking about it, the idea of eating a dead sea creature that has been shipped thousands of miles and handled by who knows how many people, and processed on machinery that I can't even picture, and which may or may not have been sitting around at room temperature, or frozen and thawed more than once, is disturbing enough in itself. That tiny vein (which has never killed anyone, AFAIK) is the least of my worries!

I have killed and butchered rabbits, and have watched deer and wild birds (partridge, turkeys) being prepared. I found it all rather fascinating. However, I'm not sure what that query has to do with the discussion.

[thorny locust]

Originally Posted by FullMetal

interesting aside to this comment...

can we safely say that these pounds of shit are more commonly refered to as cow manure?

Can we also safely state that cow manure is used as fertilizer for growing vegetables in many parts? Especially organic farms.

Isn't cow manure spilled all over the vegetables while they're growing? So is eating vegetables grown with cow manure still eating shit?

Just curious

[takes deep breath, registers, and posts. Hope I figured out correctly how to rename the link.]

No, raw manure is not generally applied on top of a growing vegetable crop. Many farmers don't use raw manure at all. When it is used, it's generally applied on pastures; on cover crops (which are crops grown not for harvest, but to be tilled back in to enrich the field); or else before the crop is even planted.

Organic farmers in particular are forbidden to apply raw manure on a crop for human consumption unless it is incorporated into the soil 120 days before the harvest of a crop in which the edible portion contacts the soil; or 90 days before the harvest of a crop in which the edible portion does not contact the soil. For most crops, this will be before the crop is planted.

USDA organic production standards

While to the best of my knowledge there is no law requiring conventional (non-organic) farmers to follow these manure restrictions, I believe most of them do: it's now considered Good Agricultural Practice, at least in the USA, and probably elsewhere.

ETA: Think I didn't do the link right. Let me try just putting it in and not renaming it:
http://www.ams.usda.gov/nop/NOP/stan...odHandReg.html