Hot Pockets Recalls 8 Million Pounds of Meat Due to “Diseased and Unsound Animals”

Last year saw a great number of widely publicized instances of food fraud and general nastiness when it came to the various items many of us regularly put in our bodies. From “fake tuna,” to rat meat in the streets of Shanghai, to alcohol in New Jersey diluted with “river water,” the list was seemingly endless. While 2014 has … Read more

Operation Swill: New Jersey Bars Caught Serving Fake Alcohol

It’s been a little while since my last food fraud post on rat meat being sold as lamb on the streets on Shanghai.  It’s been an even longer time since the last post on stealth inflation in alcohol when Maker’s Mark announced it was diluting its product (they ultimately backtracked due to consumer outrage).  Well, … Read more

Food Fraud Hits a New Low with the Potential Emergence of Dog Meat in the UK

The food fraud story has now progressed from somewhat humorous with the undersized Subway footlong subs, to the highly disturbing with the revelations of horse meat and fake tuna, to the really creepy with the now potential emergence of dog meat in UK lamb curry.  No you can’t print lamb folks, which is exactly why many humans are now eating worse than their pets in the Western world.

A mystery meat, which has defied the best efforts of scientists to identify it, has been found in a lamb curry as part of an investigation into food fraud.

The discovery raises new questions about just what is going into the nation’s takeaways and processed foods.

The meat in a Beef in Black Bean Sauce dish turned out to contain high levels of chicken material including blood, while a burger contained no beef at all, other than blood and heart.

However, most alarming of all was a curry. A spokesman for the programme said: ‘Just when we thought things couldn’t get any worse, the results came in for an Indian Lamb Curry.

‘It did contain meat, but that meat was not lamb, not pork, nor was it chicken or beef. Not horse, and not goat either.

All of the many tests to date by the lab used by the programme have failed to identify exactly which animal was the source of the meat.

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New Study Shows 59% of “Tuna” Sold in the U.S. Isn’t Tuna

This is just the latest revelation in the stealth inflation and food fraud theme I have written about frequently in recent months.  The non-profit group Oceana took samples of 1,215 fish sold in the U.S. and genetic tests found that that 59% of those labeled tuna were mislabeled. It seems that “white tuna” should be … Read more

The Meat Industry Now Consumes 80% of All Antibiotics

Care for a side of horse meat with that dose of tetracycline in your chicken wings?  Recovery never tasted so good!  Basically since 2003, antibiotic use for sick people is flat, but up 50% for use in the meat industry.  These stats are shocking.  From Mother Jones:

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration proposed a set of voluntary “guidelines” designed to nudge the meat industry to curb its antibiotics habit. Ever since, the agency has been mulling whether and how to implement the new program. Meanwhile, the meat industry has been merrily gorging away on antibiotics—and churning out meat rife with antibiotic-resistant pathogens—if the latest data from the FDA itself is any indication.

Note that that while human antibiotic use has leveled off at below 8 billion pounds annually, livestock farms have been sucking in more and more of the drugs each year—and consumption reached a record nearly 29.9 billion pounds in 2011. To put it another way, the livestock industry is now consuming nearly four-fifths of the antibiotics used in the US, and its appetite for them is growing.

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In an email, a Pew spokesperson added that while  the American Meat Institute reported a 0.2 percent increase in total meat and poultry production in 2011 compared to the previous year, the FDA data show that antibiotic consumption jumped 2 percent over the same time period. That suggests that meat production might be getting more antibiotic-intensive.  

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More Stealth Inflation as Maker’s Mark Slashes Alcohol Content

They just ain’t making Maker’s like they used to.  According to company, an apparent bourbon shortage has besieged the company leaving it no choice but to cut the alcohol content of their booze from 45% to 42%. I’m sorry, but this excuse reeks of marketing spin.  What manufacturer decides to dilute their product when they … Read more