Food Industry Defends Carbon Monoxide Use in Meat

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Food Industry Defends Carbon Monoxide Use in Meat

Posted by: Dr. Mercola
December 04 2007 | 22,782 views

U.S. lawmakers have begun to criticize the practice of adding carbon monoxide to meat in order to stabilize its color and keep it looking fresh longer.

The process, they said, misleads consumers by making the products appear safer than they are, and puts people at risk of eating spoiled meat.

Two of the United States’ largest meat processors, however, defended the packaging technique, maintaining that it is safe. Several food giants have said they support a warning label being added to meat that has been treated with carbon monoxide, or a label encouraging consumers to depend on the “use by” or “freeze by” date rather than the meat’s color to determine its safety.

Officials at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and U.S. Agriculture Department, who said they believe the carbon monoxide practice is safe, say the issue is not a public health priority.

Consumer groups, meanwhile, have petitioned the FDA to withdraw its approval of sealed packaging that uses more carbon monoxide -- 0.4 percent -- than exists in air, saying the practice makes it difficult for consumers to gauge product safety.

Sources:

Reuters November 14, 2007

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

The process of treating meat with carbon monoxide to make it appear red and fresh, when it would otherwise appear brown, is clearly a smoke and mirrors tactic to increase profits for the food industry.

The meat industry, of course, claimed that sellers were throwing away good meat when it became slightly brown. To circumvent this “waste of money” they created “modified atmosphere packaged meats.”

This is still a relatively new process, having been approved by the U.S. Agriculture Department in 2004 -- yet even then it was not without controversy.

The FDA allowed the process to be used under the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) designation, which means the FDA conducted no research of its own and instead relied on the companies to confirm product safety.

Well, when you let foxes guard the henhouse, mysterious things happen, as they did when this carbon monoxide process was safety tested.

The safety tests were conducted by Cargill and Hormel Foods, who were also promoting the process. The companies’ own scientists questioned their study results because microbial counts on under-refrigerated meats went down instead of up, as would be expected. Other indicators of spoilage increased, however, which suggested there had been an error in the tests.

A Washington Post article recently revealed that these mysterious test results did not go unnoticed. As written in the Washington Post:

"Believe me, we are also puzzled by the data," a Hormel employee wrote in a May 2004 e-mail, marked CONFIDENTIAL, to a colleague at Cargill. "Please let me know if you see any other funny data … " he wrote later. "Quite honestly, this test seemed to raise more questions than what it answered."

This apparently was not concerning to officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They gave the process their seal of approval, and the FDA, acting on the USDA’s recommendation, followed suit.

The end result is that now you are left with highly questionable meat being sold in supermarkets across the United States. Meat that is two years old will even appear fresh if it’s treated with carbon monoxide. And even though meat packages contain “use by” dates, you are depending on an honest supermarket staff to not alter these dates on “fresh-looking” meat packages.

How Can You Tell if Your Meat is Fresh?

In a small step in the right direction, Giant Food, Stop & Shop and Safeway stores have announced that they will no longer sell carbon-monoxide-treated meat, and Tyson Foods also said they would stop using the process.

However, as some Vital Votes readers have pointed out, the best way to get fresh meat remains to shop locally and get to know the farmer. This is the only real way to know if your food is fresh and grown with integrity.

To find sources of fresh, naturally grown food near you, browse through these sustainable agricultural groups in your area. Many of them even hold extremely informative annual meetings where you can meet local farmers.