Medium Raw

Meat-industry spokesmen, when rushed to television studios to counter the blowback from the latest incident of E. coli–related illness, usually respond with expressions of sympathy for the victims, assurances that our meat supply is safer than ever—and the kind of measured, reasonable noises that go over well when faced with hyperbolic arguments against meat in general. But they are very cautious when pressed on the specifics. When asked to describe the kind of scraps used in a particular brand of hamburger, they will invariably describe the trimmings as coming from premium cuts like sirloin, rib, and tenderloin. Which is, of course, technically true.

But what parts of those cuts? “Sirloin” and “rib” sections and “primal cuts” sound pretty good—but what we’re largely talking about here is the fatty, exposed outer edges that are far more likely to have come in contact with air, crap-smeared hides, other animals, and potential contaminants. The better question might be: Please tell me which of these scraps you would have been unable to use a few years ago—and exactly what do you have to do to them to make them what you would consider “safe”?

In another telling anomaly of the meat-grinding business, many of the larger slaughterhouses will sell their product only to grinders who agree to not test their product for E. coli contamination—until after it’s run through the grinder with a whole bunch of other meat from other sources.

Meaning, the company who grinds all that shit together (before selling it to your school system) often can’t test it until after they mix it with meat they bought from other (sometimes as many as three or four) slaughterhouses. It’s the “Who, me?” strategy. The idea is simply that these slaughterhouses don’t want to know—’cause, if they find out something’s wrong, they might have to actually do something about it and be, like, accountable for this shit, recall all the product they sold to other vendors.

It’s like demanding of a date that she have unprotected sex with four or five other guys immediately before sleeping with you—just so she can’t point the finger directly at you should she later test positive for clap. To my way of thinking, before you slip into the hot tub at the Playboy mansion is probably when your companions would like you to be tested. Not after.

It should be pointed out, I guess, that McDonald’s and most other fast-food retailers test the finished products far more frequently than the people who sell the stuff to them—and much more aggressively than school systems. Which, while admirable (or at least judicious on their part), seems somehow wrong.

Meat-industry flacks point to the tiny percentage of their products that end up having to be recalled—or turn out to be problematic. But we eat a lot of beef in this country. However small that percentage, that’s still a lot of fucking hamburger.

I don’t want to sound like Eric Schlosser or anything. I’m hardly an advocate for better, cleaner, healthier, or more humane—but you know what? This Cargill outfit is the largest private company in America. A hundred and sixteen billion dollars in revenue a year. And they feel the need to save a few cents on their low-end burgers by buying shit processed in ammonia? Scraps that have to be whipped or extracted or winnowed out or rendered before they can put them into a patty mix? Mystery meat assembled from all over the world and put through one grinder—like one big, group grope in moist, body-temperature sheets—with strangers?

I believe that, as an American, I should be able to walk into any restaurant in America and order my hamburger—that most American of foods—medium fucking rare. I don’t believe my hamburger should have to come with a warning to cook it well done to kill off any potential contaminants or bacteria.

I believe I shouldn’t have to be advised to thoroughly clean and wash up immediately after preparing a hamburger.

I believe I should be able to treat my hamburger like food, not like infectious fucking medical waste.

I believe the words “meat” and “treated with ammonia” should never occur in the same paragraph—much less the same sentence. Unless you’re talking about surreptitiously disposing of a corpse.

This is not Michael Pollan talking to you right now—or Eric Schlosser, whose zeal on this subject is well documented. I don’t, for instance, feel the same way about that other great American staple, the hot dog. With the hot dog, there was always a feeling of implied consent. We always knew—or assumed—that whatever it was inside that snappy tube, it might contain anything, from 100 percent kosher beef to dead zoo animals or parts of missing Gambino family. With a hot dog, especially New York’s famous “dirty-water hot dog,” there was a tacit agreement that you were on your own. They were pre-cooked, anyway, so how bad could it be?