ottawa foodies

Quite a bit of detail here

www.inspection.gc.ca

Quite a damning story on the news right now about it.

A lot of employees and former employees coming out and and speaking out about factory meat and what it is really like.

Can meat factories be safe?

www.theglobeandmail.com

Quote :

You have 35 seconds: Gut the cow without damaging its organs, and be sure not to drop the stomach on the floor. Do not cut yourself with the swift-moving blade; do not touch the scalding sanitary surfaces. Then, walk in hot water to clean your white rubber boots. Swap your knife out and start over again. Again and again.

So much for industry self-regulation

Alberta plant failed to follow its own E. coli protocols

www.theglobeandmail.com

BTW this is the same company that puts "Ontario Corn Fed Beef" on Loblaw's shelves ...

And small butcher shops aren't exempt either - like I've always said on here, ask your butcher where that meat comes from. Lavergne Western Beef deals in a lot of XL products (though they also have a lot of non-XL)

www.inspection.gc.ca

If your butcher does not have swing-beef (whole carcasses) they are probably getting bag-beef from XL or one of the other Cargill companies

EDIT: there is another small local butcher shop very highly regarded on this site who prides themself on "Alberta Beef". I'd bet dollars to donuts it is XL

BTW concerning Lavergne my estimate is that maybe 20% of their beef is cryovac XL and the rest is swing-beef (whole carcass) from Ontario

Oh yeah, and Farm Boy is pretty much 100% XL beef too, just like Costco

BTW your local muslim market in ottawa should have beef slaughtered at the halal plant in Packenham, all of which comes from local farmers. And they sell it at regular supermarket prices or better. But they typically only have stewing beef in the case - you have to ask for anything else. I just got 7 lbs of ground and they ground it for me while I waited.

Oh and it is typically fresh cut from the carcass while you wait ...

What about the Halal beef bones sold for making soup at Loblaws? Do you think they came from Packenham, or XL?

Not sure where Loblaw gets their halal stuff but I would not put money on it being Packenham

So I just heard this from what I consider to be a very reliable source. A friend of mine says he has a friend (not a friend of a friend or a cousin or whatever i.e. urban legend) who works in one of these places in Brooks Alberta. Apparently when the cattle are slaughtered, their bellies are so full of undigested corn, that they empty them back into the feeding bins for the other animals.

I sure would like to see an investigative journalist go in and confirm that one!

EDIT: i've started contacting journalists in Alberta who are already covering this story, to see if any of them can confirm this

i get my beef frfom a little grocery store in Kemptville. The B&H in old town . Not a fancy store - but they are the only onein town with a hanging carcass.

I was helping farmer friends pick up their meat from an abattoir and noticed that the box it was packed in was obviously from some big meat company.

Wasn't till after all the press came out about XL that I realized that's what was on the box. It's a big company, so I guess I'm not surprised that the meat is popping up everywhere.

I also often wonder if meat health and safety issues would be as rampant if the feedlot/meat packer owners weren't so greedy, and customers weren't always encouraged by stores/marketing to buy things as cheap as possible.

Once in a while I look a the the meat prices on fliers and wonder how on earth anyone can make a living on that. I guess by taking only 35 seconds to gut a cow.

Also need to consider process flow. If you have one company at one site processing 40% of the market, when they have issues it will impact a large part of the market aka society. So maybe we should remove the regulations and marketing boards that promote factory farms and shun the small scale farmer.

Though for XL they had plenty of CFIA inspectors there but I doubt the truth will come out why they dropped the ball on this one. Just like Walkerton....when morons want to screw things up, they will find a way.

For us small local folks, there are a few eastern ont based plants who are small scale who have govt on ont paid inspectors on site.

So glad I ordered my beef from a local farmer (Dobson's). We even visited the farm to see the free roaming grass fed cows and enjoyed Bob Dobson's informative hospitality. Ran into Bob at 'Feast of Fields' and at the Carp Farmer's Market. There is a lot to be said about getting to know the people who supply your food and actually seeing it in the field.

I sure TRUST a local farmer much more than the CFIA and any large factory farm or 'producer'!!!

zymurgist, if I could offer a correction, I asked the last time I was at Farm Boy, and their beef does not come from XL. Rather, it comes from Excel, which is another enormous industrial beef operation (I believe they fall under the Cargill umbrella *shudder*) with an almost identical name.

I will admit that I was very disappointed to hear this, since they do offer some locally raised meats (I'm thinking of the duck in particular) and other products. One would think that since they make such a big deal about the quality of their food, they would be more interested in dealing with local producers, but I guess it's all about the bottom line and how much average suburban grocery shoppers are willing to pay.

Aha, thanks for the correction!

So ... same s*it, different pile :-)

This is pretty damning :

OTTAWA – XL Foods has repeatedly been cited for deficient food safety standards stretching back more than a decade, including violations for E. coli contamination on multiple occasions, CTV News has learned.

www.ctvnews.ca