Restock Dates: Please see our Farm Blog where we post our weekly newsletter for the latest updates

You Should Not Have to Wonder if Your Food is Safe!

written by

Ben Simmons

posted on

December 8, 2018

You Should Not Have to Wonder if Your Food is Safe! - Weekly I receive notices of product recalls from the USDA. Here is the latest report I received December 5th -

JBS Tolleson, Inc., a Tolleson, Ariz. establishment, is recalling approximately 12,093,271 pounds of non-intact raw beef products that may be contaminated with Salmonella
Newport.

Dr. Mercola explains Why Contamination Affects Such Large Amounts of Meat

"The answer is quite simple. While many think of a pack of ground beef as being the meat from an individual cow, it's actually an amalgam of meat from many different cows — a single fast food hamburger can contain meat from more than 1,000 animals, and all you need is one sick animal to contaminate nearly unlimited amounts of meat as it all runs through the same processing equipment and gets mixed together in gigantic batches.


It's also important to realize that contamination is far more common than you might suspect — not just from potentially harmful bacteria but also drugs, including banned ones. As recently reported by Consumer Reports, drugs such as ketamine (a hallucinogenic anesthetic), phenylbutazone (an anti-inflammatory pain reliever) and chloramphenicol (a potent and dangerous antibiotic), are all found in the U.S. meat supply.

A recent Environmental Working Group (EWG) analysis of food testing done by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2015 reveals 83 percent of all supermarket meats — including turkey, pork, beef and chicken products — were contaminated with Enterococcus faecalis, i.e., fecal bacteria, and a high percentage had antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

Sixty-two percent of ground beef samples were contaminated with drug-resistant Enterococcus faecalis, 26 percent of which were resistant to tetracyclines. Considering the high contamination rate, the fact that more people aren't sickened and/or killed on a routine basis is likely a testament to the efficacy of the human immune system."

You can read his complete article here.

At Nature's Gourmet Farm our beef (and pork) are processed in a small family owned artisan style facility. The product you receive includes the meat (DNA) of animals raised on our farm. Care is taken by the processor during slaughter, aging, processing, packaging, and freezing to guard the health benefits we breed and managed in the animals. All to provide you a safe, nutritious, and healthy product.

CHRISTMAS SALE - many folks like to buy our 10# Ground Beef and give as gifts at Christmas. To help out we are offering our 10# Ground Beef at $60 - this is a savings of $8 or 12%. Sale ends at the Order By Date listed above.

Customer Feedback-
"The best tasting meats around. Loved the bone in rib-eyes, roast and chickens. Now I am in love with the eggs. They make the fluffiest, tastiest scrambled eggs ever. Just got in an order of ground beef yesterday. I taste a great hamburger ???? in my future. My friends claims that the bulk sausage is awesome. That will be my next order.
Thanks to Ben & Beth for caring about healthy foods and making them available to us..” - Julie H

Quote Worth Re-Quoting – “Government is not writing the rules. Business, trade organizations, and lobbyist are writing the rules and they are not written with us in mind" ~Jeffrey Hollender, Co-founder of Seventh Generation

Thank you for supporting our regenerative, local farm.
Ben & Beth


















































































































































More from the blog

Land O'Lakes CEO Interview

SEE WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK FROM YOUR FARMER Land O'Lakes CEO Beth Ford comments New Sausage Flavors Update RFK Jr. to Med Schools: Add Nutrition Classes "Immediately" Product Availability Update

Farm & Market Updates

Market Update – Our farm objective is to raise nutrient dense meats without all the chemicals, vaccines, hormones, and etc. And be able to provide them to a community of families at a reasonable price. We measure success based on pounds sold verses dollars earned. Current beef prices are making that harder to accomplish as families seek options to reduce their food bills. I know we have not passed along the full impact of higher prices to our customers which means we are not making as much as before nor are we selling as much beef.

Beef Pricing Update & Sausage

Beef Pricing Update – Beef prices continue to increase and hit a new All-Time high AGAIN last week. This week, the Chief Production Officer (CPO) for JBS Meats (one of the four largest beef packers) stated that prices will remain high for at least the next two years. His rationale was the low cow herd numbers, little to no indication farmers/ranchers are retaining females to grow their herds (at these high prices they are taking the money now while it is there); when females are being retained it will take over 2.5 years before a calf will be ready for harvest (9-month gestation + about 24 months old at harvest). Lastly, consumer demand remains strong.