Food Safety

Farmers feed 1-2 million tons of "poultry litter" to cattle that are later slaughtered for meat. You can guess what's in poultry litter, right ?  Yes, that's right. Chicken poop, feces - you get the idea. Of course along with the feces there is some straw etc. from the chickens' cages, but how cheap can you get?  Regular straw is too expensive so we'll feed these meat cattle straw that chickens have pooped on? The Consumers Union and The Center for Science in the Public Interest have both asked the FDA to ban this practice. So far the FDA has left this kind of regulation up to state regulators, which means that unless you know which state your meat comes from, and how they regulate "poultry litter" being fed to cattle, you would have no way to know if poultry litter was fed to the cow that provided the meat for your hamburger. The concern for some is the fear that Mad Cow disease could become more common due to pathogens from the chicken feces being directly consumed by cows.  For more information about this issue, click here.