Whole Foods beef recall: organic and natural?

Whole Foods, the expensive, yuppie organic and natural foods supermarket chain, has recalled ground beef it purchased from Nebraska Beef. Just even needing a recall at all raises eyebrows about Whole Foods, which looks down its nose at mass market grocers and the mass-produced foods they sell--allegedly full of preservatives, hormones, growth promotants and unhealthy chemicals.

Whole Foods talks about the free range, grass fed, natural, organic meats it sells, but obviously sneaks a little bottom-feeding, factory-produced hamburger into the meat case too.

You see, Nebraska Beef is what the industry calls a cow killer--when old dairy cows and beef cows can no longer produce calves or milk after 8 years or so, they are shipped for slaughter to plants like Nebraska Beef that specialize in cow processing. There is little way to tell if animals this old are organic or natural, like you can with younger animals.

Rather than even worrying about producing the higher-dollar primal cuts of beef off the cows, they grind up the whole carcass--producing the least expensive hamburger for the school lunch program, military bases and other government feeding programs, as well as fast food restaurants.

The better grades of ground beef, are steak trim from USDA select and choice carcasses, that went mainly into primal cuts for steaks, roasts, etc. The clear implication is that this quality, and greater, is what they sell at fancy prices at Whole Foods.

Obviously not, since Whole Foods has had to sheepishly take part in the Nebraska Beef recall.

The truth is, there is nothing wrong with non-organic, non-natural beef. Whole Foods is admitting as much, by sneaking it into their stores. Nebraska Beef is a reputable ground beef producer, who frankly has been victimized by USDA's policy of slack meat inspections, and then making the producer pay when their laxity gets caught.

E. Coli is a very weak pathogen, and easily killed in normal cooking of ground beef. It is poor cooking technique, not the beef, that is the cause of this recall. But more rigorous USDA meat plant inspections would have caught the problem, before it got out to consumers, too.

The out-and-out hypocrites in the whole mess is Whole Foods, who has been hoodwinking the unsuspecting, trusting public, which has paid them handsomely for years for an allegedly better product. But it wasn't.

Many food industry experts would tell you that this is common procedure at so-called "organic, natural" merchants like Whole Foods. Just a word to the wise.