Largest Beef Recall in History

A mind-boggling 143 million pounds of beef has just been recalled by the USDA. Evidently the slaughter house was slaughtering downer cows, which is illegal, and rightly so (although, one would think it should be illegal to PRODUCE a downer cow, not simply to try to feed that cow to a human being). (Downer cows are animals that can no longer stand on their own because they have been too abused and/or malnourished to do so.) Guess where most of this meat went? That's right, straight into the mouths of America's children thanks to our government's policy of feeding school children the lowest grade beef available. How many children have already eaten this contaminated beef? There's no way of knowing. For more details, check out the article in the New York Times. The Times leaves out one calculation, which is how many cattle are we talking about when we're talking about 143 million pounds of beef. Here's my estimate: around 286,000 head (assuming each steer yields around 500 lbs of beef). A veritable city of cattle.