Contaminated Veggies Are the Meat Industry’s Fault

Despite being one of the most grotesquely overfed populations in recent memory, Americans remain preoccupied only with the quantity, not the quality, of their food. They don't mind if scientists inject their french fries with high-fructose corn syrup as long as McDonald's super-sizes their order for a nickel.

Yet, the attitude toward vegetarianism is changing in the United States. While it's difficult to quantify how many vegetarians live within our borders, it's easier to observe the attitude toward vegetarians. Twenty years ago, "What're you, a Commie?" was a typical response to a confession of veggie brotherhood. Nowadays, despite the occasional stink eye, meat eaters at least understand that vegetarianism is healthy, if not a lifestyle particularly suited for them.

Even though the United States is more veggie-friendly these days, it's still difficult to avoid crappy food, even if one chooses to become a vegan, as I did six years ago. Despite my decision, I found myself projectile vomiting into my toilet last week. Diagnosis: food poisoning. Suspect: tomatoes. Unfortunately, becoming a vegetarian or a vegan doesn't ensure healthiness. Sure, vegetarians enjoy many health perks (low rates of: heart disease, obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc.) but we're still at the mercy of the meat industry in many ways.

For starters, the meat industry poisons the environment. A 2006 United Nations report described the devastation caused by the meat industry as "one of the top two or three most significant contributors to the most serious environmental problems, at every scale from local to global." Aside from global warming, meat production is a large factor in deforestation, wasted land, and air and water contamination.

Water contamination may play a large part in increasing reports of vegetable and fruit contamination. In 2007, a California produce company recalled bagged fresh spinach after a sample tested positive for salmonella. Nearly a year before, an outbreak of E. coli in fresh spinach killed three people and sickened 200. The recent tomato salmonella outbreak has affected at least 145 people, resulting in 23 hospitalizations, and many believe water contamination is the cause of the affected tomatoes.

It's not the veggies that are to blame. The problem is the meat. Salmonella is an animal pathogen, so it doesn't originate from tomatoes. Most experts agree that the bacteria probably come from groundwater contaminated with animal feces.

You read that right: Cow shit is in your tomatoes. Actually, cow shit is in everything: the water, hamburgers, other plant life, and if one ascribes to the hippie New Age belief that we are all one pulsating organism upon Mother Earth, then cow shit is in all of us.

But in a realer, more concrete sense, frenzied production lines coupled with lax management have resulted in a dramatic increase in food poisoning. The shitty (literally) food is so prevalent that it's affecting non-meat-eaters. While salmonella prefers fleshy fruit like tomatoes, our friend E. coli prefers leafy greens like spinach.

The problem is prevalent. A recent census of produce outbreaks between 1996 and 2007 counted no fewer than 33 epidemics from salmonella-contaminated fruits and vegetables.

Some scientists claim the cure for salmonella and E. coli contamination isn't scrubbing clean the fruits and vegetables because doing so could remove the good bacteria humans rely upon for survival. The solution will come from the government and outraged citizens demanding that the meat industry clean up its practices so fresh produce doesn't suffer.

The outrage has already exploded in other parts of the world. While cows poison groundwater and otherwise healthy plant life here at home, Americans remain mute about the diseased slabs of meat they're consistently forced to choose from at their grocery stores. Meanwhile, angry mobs took to the streets of South Korea when their government resumed importing beef from the United States. This wasn't some kind of fervent anti-American protest, but rather concerned citizens protecting themselves from potential mad cow disease.