I just saw the movie Food Inc. and is it an eye opener. The number of incidences of e coli are directly related to the factory production of farm animals for slaughter in feed lots or chicken houses. First they feed the cows corn instead of hay which they evolved to eat. Corn produces bacteria in their gut including e coli whereas, if they were fed grass or hay this would not happen. Animals who eat hay produce manure which can be spread on fields as fertilizer, but animals fed corn including cows and hogs produce a toxic sludge. A hog waste pond recently threatened to pollute a major river. Corn is subsidized by the government so the unhealthy production of meat and low prices for fast food are actually subsidized by the government!
My Grandfather was a farmer, and he grew the hay in his own fields which he fed to his cattle and then spread the manure back on the fields with a manure spreader. They all did this in the 1940s and 50s.
Cows in feed lots have to stand around all day in their own waste products and this translates into more e coli in the slaughterhouse. No wonder there are so many recalls of beef products! Also birds pick up the e coli and transmit it to adjacent crops like spinach.
If you saw this movie you would never eat another piece of beef or chicken from the super market and especially from a fast food place.
Industrialized meat production by just a small number of corporate giants like Smithfield and Tyson is literally killing us because it's laced with growth hormones and the FDA is staffed by former lobbyists from the industries they're supposed to regulate. Poor people can pay less for a fast food meal than if they bought vegetables at the super market, and 1 out of 3 people born since 2000 will have early onset Type 2 diabetes. If you are a minority, it will be 1 out of 2. High fructose corn syrup and industrialized meat production are major contributors to obesity especially from fast foods.
The other interesting thing is that Monsanto has added a patented gene to soybeans that lets the field be sprayed with pesticide without affecting the soybean production. Since it is a patented gene, the farmer can't save seeds for next year's crop because they legally belong to Monsanto. Monsanto sends out investigators to make sure no farmer saves seeds or else they are prosecuted. Even farmers who don't buy Monsanto's genetically modified soybean seeds can be prosecuted by Monsanto if some of the genetically modified seeds happen to cross pollinate in a non-Monsanto farmer's field.
