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Spinal Column-Contaminated
Meat Served In Schools
By Michael Greger, M.D.
Organic Consumers Association
Excerpted from an article published July 15, 2003
12-30-3
 
In 1997, the consumer advocacy organization Public Citizen obtained USDA inspection records through the Freedom of Information Act showing that a significant percentage of AMR [advanced meat recovery] samples were turning up contaminated with central nervous system (CNS) tissue (brain or spinal cord). Instead of simply requiring that spinal columns be removed from carcasses before being placed in advanced meat recovery systems, the USDA responded by merely directing its inspectors to continue testing samples of AMR meat for the presence of central nervous tissue.
 
Despite their promise to initiate testing, the USDA took fewer than 60 samples over the next 3 years, yet still found spinal cord in a number of them. The first major study of AMR meat was published in 2001. Colorado State University researchers found that "well over 50%" of the samples of AMR beef from neck bones were contaminated with CNS tissue...
 
The USDA again responded only with promises to do more testing. The results of the USDA's tests were made public in 2002. Eighty-eight percent of the meat processors (30 out of 34) were producing AMR beef which contained unacceptable nervous tissue, and almost all of the samples (96.5%) contained bone marrow, which may also be infectious...
 
...the USDA continues to allow tissues in the American beef supply which are so potentially dangerous that the Food and Drug Administration has excluded them from cattle feed. As CSPI's [Center for Science in the Public Interest] Director of Food Safety put it, "U.S. cattle aren't allowed to eat cattle spinal cord - and neither should people," especially children -- AMR beef is still allowed in the National School Lunch Program.
 
http://organicconsumers.org/madcow/GregerBSE.cfm
 
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