Did you know that some meat companies package their fresh meat products using carbon monoxide? Carbon monoxide! The only time I would want to come in contact with its deadly fumes is if I were wanting to take the final step into (with apologies to Steven Colbert) deathiness.
Due to congressional pressure, some companies have abandoned the use of carbon monoxide. Some food retailers — among them Publix, Wegmans, HEB, Safeway, Stop & Shop, and SAM’S CLUB — have stopped selling meat packaged that way. Target wants to put a warning label on such meat. However, two major US meat processors, Cargill and Hormel defended the process recently, saying that color is not the best indicator for meat freshness. They recommend consumers use a products use-by date to make their choices.
It’s not been a good time for the meat industry. The meat manufacturers have sullied their image more than enough with their sullied products of late. Meat company Topps went out of business due to its contaminated meat. Cargill, as a matter of fact, had to recall almost 2 million pounds of ground beef in October because of contamination with the E. coli bacteria. The recalls were not for a suspected contamination at Cargill facilities, mind you, but real live contamination. People fell ill; a little girl died.
Which brings us back to the carbon monoxide. Meat companies use it because it extends the shelf-life of case-ready meat. Well, ok, I guess. But it also turns meat a bright pinky-red, covering up any brown discoloration and suspicious odors that might be present — what Grandma used to refer to as meat that has “gone off.” It seems meat companies are allowed to sell us bad meat and sell it to us all pretty in pink. We’re served double-whammy sauce with our double hamburgers: bacteria and a deadly gas.
Furthermore, the government agency in charge of what can and can’t be added to our food, the FDA, not only is not unaware of the use of carbon monoxide by meat manufactures, but allows it, listing carbon monoxide on its generally regarded as safe (GRAS) list. Not that there hasn’t been a, well, stink. USA TODAY ran a story and people blogged.
Not to worry, though. Another arm of the gummint is investigating. A small Michigan spice and extract supplier to case-ready meat manufacturers, Kalsec, petitioned the FDA to reconsider its GRAS status for carbon monoxide. Congress, in the form of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, has asked the FDA to reconsider and so the FDA is reconsidering. It has until February 23 to decide if it will rescind carbon monoxide’s GRAS status. In addition the Senate is holding hearings on the matter. If the FDA does not pull carbon monoxide’s GRAS status, legislation banning its use will be introduced.
And while introducing a bill and getting it passed are two very different things, let’s hear it for the little guy, Kalsec, and the big fellow, the US Congress. And in the meantime, woe to companies that haven’t gotten on board and voluntarily stopped using carbon monoxide to package their meat products. They are sitting in a parked car in a garage with the door shut and the end is near.
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