Beef, Ground on a Bias

Conservatives like to complain about the "liberal mainstream media."  A lot.  They blame the "MSM" for a laundry list of evils, for everything from fawning coverage of Democrats at the expense of Republicans to ignoring "real news" to gibberish about them advocating the indoctrination of kids.  Prime targets: New York Times, MSNBC, National Public Radio, ABC, CNN, and so forth.  (Always mysterious to me why Faux Noise with all its ratings dominance is excluded from the MSM category.)

This nonsense aside, there are much better grounds for pointing out liberal bias than whining about unfairness.  Case in point, today's New York Times article about the dangers posed by ground beef.  Starting with the horrific story of a young woman, Stephanie Smith, who became paralyzed after eating a hamburger tainted by E. coli, the writer goes on to describe "why eating ground beef is still a gamble":

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.

Using a combination of sources — a practice followed by most large producers of fresh and packaged hamburger — allowed Cargill to spend about 25 percent less than it would have for cuts of whole meat.

Those low-grade ingredients are cut from areas of the cow that are more likely to have had contact with feces, which carries E. coli, industry research shows.

Yuck.  E. coli is an ever-present danger, and apparently, my beloved hamburger is the biggest vector of this bacteria.  Who knew you could become paralyzed from E. coli???

Anyway, point well taken.  I will now never buy ground beef unless I know that it was ground at the grocery store from a good (single) cut of meat, or maybe if I'm buying from a local, reputable rancher.  I'm definitely never buying anything from Cargill.  I even applaud the Times for their fantastic exposé of meat grinding practices.  Good journalism.

But, then, they have to go and say this (emphasis mine):

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen. 

WTF?  How do you make the leap from exposing unsanitary meat production practices to fingering the federal government for not sufficiently regulating meat grinding?  I don't need more federal laws, I just need more investigative pieces like these that uncover the unsavory side of food production so that I, as a consumer, can be informed and make appropriate choices.  This, dare I say, would be an old school conservative point of view.  Their liberal bias is what leads the Times to blame the federal government for not preventing all hazards out there.

Freedom of Difference

The hullabaloo over Obama's selection of Rick Warren to lead the invocation at the Inauguration has exposed the limits to which progressives are willing to embrace "post-partisan politics." While I can understand their disdain for a man who rejects gay marriage and supported Prop 8, those who protest his selection make the critical error of perpetuating the mentality that one must only associate with those that agree on everything. For all his faults--and there are enough--Rick Warren is hardly a Pat Robertson or James Dobson, those luminaries who blamed 9/11 and Katrina on the presence of gays in this country. Moreover, Warren has consistently tried to move evangelical Christians toward social causes such as poverty-alleviation, an important service for which the nation ought to be grateful. If for nothing else, Warren ought to be embraced for his attempt to change the evangelicals' dismaying record of being one-trick ponies, for their willingness to ignore social injustice so long as "higher values" such as a public expression of faith are allowed. In this context, Obama's invitation to Warren ought to be commended because someone evangelicals admire will now publicly lead them in praying for the new president and his leadership. If you think this is a meaningless gesture, then you are no more interested in having a government for all Americans than were the cast of characters who "led" for the past eight years. Warren's presence at the Inaugural stage ought to be more disconcerting to the Christian right than for the progressive left. This is a splendid opportunity to engage the two parts of the country that do not care to acknowledge each other, let alone tolerate their differences in views. The fight over gay marriage will continue as it should in popular culture, values, and in government--including in the courts. That should not prevent collaboration in other important areas, particularly in tackling poverty. An acknowledgment of the other might be a good first step toward increasing collaboration. And, who knows, it might actually lead to greater dialogue and the chance for persuasion, as opposed to legal coercion.