The recent NY Times article, linked above, raises a matter of extreme importance to the public: widespread ground beef contamination. Yet it fails to identify the cause of the problem: non-grazing, grain-fed cattle. In fact, while the meat-producing industry would prefer not to change the status-quo, if food-safety reform is inevitable, industry leaders would prefer e. coli testing at the meat-grinding site. After reading the Times article, one might surmise that this is the ideal solution. For industry, however, that would not be so bad. At worst, that would require all meat to be doused with e. coli-killing ammonia, which is a solution only until you remember that humans are supposed to eat the product.
The real solution would be massive restructuring of the largest cattle producers, shifting to grass-finished cattle (all-grass-fed cattle is the gold standard, and also probably a pipe dream). Large-scale producers will do anything to avoid this, because that means less money from deals with corn growers and less bulky cattle.
So, while e. coli testing and regulation is important, it's key for a publication like the NY Times to step outside the industry/regulatory framework and probe the underlying causes of a faulty and dangerous national meat supply.
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