HOW'S THAT OTHER WAR GOING?

You know the one I mean - the War on E.Coli! Oh, it's going swimmingly - but don't swim in Georgia's Lake Lanier, where a tanker truck spilled its contents - chicken blood - resulting in a spike in E.Coli there. And don't drink the water in Cook, Minnesota, because it's chock full of E.Coli.

But these are just teasers - the real issue, of course, is how the USDA is clamping down on meatpackers to stop people from getting sick and dying from feces-smeared beef. Well, gee: Stampede Meats (an unfortunate enough moniker, though when the story broke on Friday (*cough*), it was only tied to a distributor called "Farmer's Pride" - sound familiar?) has just recalled 739,000 Pounds (370 tons) of Beef, not just for suspicion of E.Coli, but because four people have already been sickened by the company's steaks. "Steaks are not usually considered a high-risk source of E. coli, but the government said the Stampede products had been injected with tenderizers and other solutions, and the injections increased the risk of contamination." Again, sound familiar?

And in a further tie to the previous post, Kirk Smith, supervisor of MDH's foodborne illness investigation team, said it is not known how widely the products were distributed. Boy, how convenient for the meatpackers, who with the help of their friends in the GOP just scuttled a law that would vastly improve tracking and tracing of meat.
UPDATE 7/9: The E. Coli that sickened people has been connected to the Stampede meat recall, says the AP, with MSNBC pointing out that this now means everyone should be wary of steaks. Well, yeah.