SHHHHHHHHHHHH.....

[JFN1]

So I just got back from visiting a friend of mine at the hospital (they suffered "mild" food poisoning). It seems he, his wife, and their 5 year old son all got sick about 2 hours after finishing breakfast this morning. They ate eggs and toast.

Kat (my friend's wife) told me she thinks it was the eggs that made them all sick. I asked her why she thought this. She told me that according to the date stamped on the carton, the eggs had expired about 5 days ago, but she used them anyway because they're...eggs.

Back in the 1970's, Congress passed some consumer protection laws (sorry I don't have references, this is from memory) concerning "wear engineering." It seems big companies like Whirlpool and GE were purposely designing their products to fail after a certain number of uses. This "wear engineering" was costing Americans billions, since the durable goods they were buying (like washers, ovens, and water heaters) had parts that strategically wore out long before the rest of the machines, thereby causing the consumer to have to replace the entire machine. The corporations sold more machines, and that was what mattered to them. Congress put a stop to it, supposedly.

Now comes my wife's uncle, who sold his egg farm to a big co-op a few years back, while retaining the right to work the farm himself. The co-op sold his farm about a year ago, and he has the same deal with the new owners as he had with the co-op. Well, I remember him complaining last Christmas that the new owners had forced him to change his feed. He said the new feed upset the chickens, causing some of them to stop eating to the point of death. He'd never seen the like before. When he complained to the corporation, they told him this was the feed he had to use, or else he would lose his job. So he continued using the feed, and to my knowledge, uses it still.

Do you see where I am going with this?

Are big food producers "wear engineering" our food? Used to be eggs did not have an expiration date on them - you used them until they were gone, and they didn't spoil.

Used to be lots of products didn't expire - but now they do. I've eaten plenty of dry goods after they expire - they are a bit stale, but still nourishing.

But dairy and meat all seem to go bad much faster, and much more spectacularly, than they used to.

So how much food is being wasted for the sake of profit? How much "wear engineering" is going into our food supply? And what are the long term health and environmental effects, if this is indeed happening? Biotechnology certainly exists that could spoil our food on purpose after a certain amount of time...

No one is talking about this, in government, in the media, or in the private sector. I asked the manager of the grocery store (Krogers) today why eggs have expiration dates on them. He said to keep consumers safe from spoiled eggs. I asked him if he remembered when eggs did not have expiration dates on them, he answered that he did. I asked him why people didn't used to get sick eating "old" eggs, and he said he didn't know, and could no longer speak to me on the subject as he had to get back to work. I asked him if he remembered eggs going bad on customers prior to expiration dates being applied, and he just shrugged and walked away.

Maybe I'm paranoid, I don't know. But after the swine flue scare this month, the condition of the pig farm that is responsible, and the sorry state of corporate responsibility, I have to wonder what the hell is going on...and how safe our food truly is...

[Captain Hilts]

1. That's the sale-by date, not the eating date on eggs I thought. Being old wasn't enough

to make them that sick from what I know.

[drmeow]

2. I still use eggs well past their expiration date

and have never gotten sick - as recently as last week.

Edit to add:

where the yolks runny? That's like eating raw chicken.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

3. in the old days you didn't need to refrigerate them

now with salmonella etc you do.

[ThomCat]

4. I'm very sorry about your friend and his family.

:(

I can't really comment knowledgeably about your theory. I'll leave that to others. But I will say it wouldn't surprise me.

If the feed is cheap, and has the second effect of cycling products through the marketplace faster then I can definitely see mass-agrabusiness going for it. :(

[defendandprotect]

5. Life is a lot more dangerous under corporate fascism that's for sure --!!!

I had a toaster oven for more than 20 years and got rid of it simply because it was
difficult to clean -- it was an old GE when their products were reliable.

So -- I bought a Delongi which was great until it quit in about a year and a half --
You can't get them repaired- and if you can it would cost you pretty much as much as
a new one. I had paid $80-90 for it -- saw it recently on a bulk sale/64 of them/
for $16 each -- you had to take all of them!

If you look these things up on the internet, you'll see many of them aren't only failing
after a short time -- some are immediately defective -- and some -- Delongi and Krup,
especially -- are exploding and going on fire!

Knobs are falling off, thermostats don't work -- doors don't close properly -
hot trays come flying out when you open the door.

Pretty much the same with all products -- My iron and back up iron also quit after decades --
Best I could find is Rowenta but Blooms only had a really heavy one -- didn't know there
were lighter ones. It went sailing off my ironing board -- point down naturally -- and
put a hole in my wood floor!!

Check anything you're going to buy on the internet first --

Even LLBean has lousey reviews now on a lot of their stuff -- adult hats that would fit
children, sheets that are way too long for beds and that come out of the wash severely
wrinkled -- on and on!!!

Food . . ? Where is fresh food. They're holding all of this stuff in back cold rooms --
leaving older vegetables out longer. They're all transported for at least days --
many of them longer.

Restaurants -- even our local well to do restaurants are not as clean as they once were.

How about cable companies -- I'm just switching to Verizon to lock in the costs for two
years and to regain channels which Comcast has been whisking away month by month and moving
to a higher tier -- i.e., more expensive service. They did that with the Senate/C-span!!!
Moved it so they could broadcast it in "high definition" -- what a scam -- !!!

Wow -- sorry to load all of that on you!!!

[texastoast]

6. Planned obsolescence

And you are right--it was in the 1970s when American corporations realized that it was a bad idea to build quality. That's how the U.S. automakers lost out to Toyota and Datsun. New sales were the thang. Can't have a car that will work for 20 years, ya know?

These wing-nut Christians who shop at Wal-Mart just kill me. They don't worship God--they worship the dollar.

When we get rid of urban sprawl so local farms can have the good land, the food supply will improve. When we are happy once again with two pair of shoes, hand-made by a craftsman in the USA, we will get quality.

And until we address the really, really big elephant in the room--too many people wanting too much stuff with no end to population increase in sight and certainly no end to third-world countries wanting to consume like we in the U.S. do (think India and China for starters)--our kids and grandkids are doomed.

[underpants]

7. Lightbulbs

I can't find it now but someone posted here once the lifespan of lightbulbs is much shorter here in the US as opposed to Europe and Asia

When I was in the Army there was a story in the Stars and Stripes about East German lightbulbs. I was in Germany. The unification had just happened and two of the most coveted items in the former East Germany were lightbulbs and toiletpaper. You can imagine what communist TP was like. There were calls to the energy company complaining about a lamp going off shortly there after. They weren't used to lightbulbs going out at all (according to the SnS) but that appears to be an exaggeration. They certainly weren't used to them burning out that quickly.

[cooolandrew]

8. Everything eventually wears and tears or goes rotten even us.

[Quantess]

9. We have a small flock of unfenced, free-range chickens

and their eggs eventually go bad, just as the ones from the factory farm do. I was not aware that factory-farm eggs spoil quicker than the yard-chickens' eggs.

However, as someone else mentioned, salmonella might be the real problem that caused your friends to get sick.

[Warpy]

11. Washing the eggs is just not a good idea

since it removes a coating on the shell that is impervious to bacteria. Washing the eggs opens them up to anything living on the surface. When stores don't refrigerate their eggs (and some stores don't, especially when they're on sale), that allows the contamination to grow within the egg.

If you can get free range eggs with chicken crap and feathers still clinging to them, they're the best.

[texastoast]

15. I'm not selling eggs

with chicken crap on them. My buyers just don't want that.

I wash my free-range eggs with cold soapy water, rinse them, and let them air dry. Nobody has died from salmonella yet. Oh, no, Warpy. Cannot do the chicken crap sales.

[Warpy]

10. Dunno, but I started noticing a funny "off" flavor about 5 years ago

and chicken has been off the menu. I find Quorn has managed to come up with something that satisfies my once a year fried chicken Jones quite nicely.

I don't know what they're putting in commercial broiler feed, but I could taste it.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

12. Europeans think that our meat and dairy taste so strongly of chemicals that they're almost inedible.

I've had several tell me that. I find sometimes that chicken has a preserved taste that reminds me of bologna, not chicken.

[Warpy]

14. My problem was that I was too poor to eat it frequently

so I didn't get gradually used to an off flavor.

It's there. The Europeans are absolutely right about that.

[1]

13. or... it could be someone did not wash their hands or a cutting board or somesuch...

maybe it was the eggs.

maybe not.