Meat or Threat?
By Haosong Zhang
Most Chinese people think US has safe meat supply, but the most US citizens urgently
want to get an exhaustive regulation of their meat supply. Eric Schlosser (2002) explains
“every day in the United States, roughly 20000 people are sick by a foodborne disease, 900
are hospitalized, and fourteen die” in his book Fast Food Nation. Therefore the question here
is “Does the United States meat industry need to be regulated?” The following four sources
give elaborate data and information for this serious social issue in both biased and non-biased
ways.
Former representative Bob Schaffer (2002) makes a statement that US has the safest beef
in the world, in the article “Our food is still safe.” This article can be viewed as response of
the issue that the hamburgers of ConAgra Beef plant carry escherichia coli 0157:H7, and
have caused the “illness of at least 30 people” (Bob 2002). First of all, the author admits this
issue is a mistake, because the federal investigators waited almost two weeks to inform the
company that there is pathogenic bacteria that had been detected in this batch of products.
This delay caused large losses for the company and increasing infectious people. However
the author still believe US beef was, is and will always be safe to eat based on five reasons
(2002). Firstly, farmers are providing high-quality meat by advanced devices. Secondly, the
supervision of USDA detect the safety of meat. “Thirdly, the industry initiates some
implementations of pathogen-killing procedures” (Bob 2002). Fourthly, consumers have
responsibility to check the date of manufacture and cook in right way. Fifthly, even though all
of steps above are satisfies, everything has risk.
In the article “Would Eating Less Meat Save The Planet?”, the author Asa Wahlquist
(2013) explains the earth is the planet with a complex system, and gives the information and
data of the results about people eating less meat or not. Wahlquist (2013) states “about 70
percent of the world’s agricultural land is grassland,” which is too dry to plant grain.
Therefore the only way to get food from those areas is grazing cattle, sheep, and horse. The
truth is those ruminants will produce methane which has much more potential contribute to
global warming than carbon dioxide, but those gases actually can only live for 9 to 12 years.
Even if vegetables make up a high proportion in vegetarianism’s diet, they still eat dairy
product which produce by ruminants. And the planting of vegetable and grain need farmland
by destroying the forest, which actually reduce the amount of carbon dioxide absorbed by
trees.
