We try to avoid mass market meat, ground beef included. We don't shop at Walmart.

I have a pound of the Marketside Butcher Organic stuff in my freezer from the week before the recall.

Elmer, I don't either, but it seems many here do. I always worry that people won't hear about recalls of potentially dangerous products/food, thus my posting.

What a shame all that beef will go to waste, especially in light of the current meat shortages some areas are experiencing.

Until consumers push back and refuse to buy meat and other foods produced in food factory conditions, these sad contamination incidents will continue to happen. People will needlessly get sick and some will die. It's not if but when, over and over. They don't surprise me and each next incident should be expected.

For those for whom price is more important than food wholesomeness and animal welfare, these contamination incidents are what your buying choices lead to. It's too bad.

I understand that not everyone can afford or prioritize more expensive meat, but I'd rather eat beans than factory meat. Not everyone feels that way.

Our food is needlessly cheap and corners are cut that compromise quality and food safety to get there. The alternative approach to "cheap" is not only "expensive", it's far from either or.

Food in many other parts of the world, especially in the EU, is slightly more expensive. Forget the stats below for Third World countries, those numbers aren't a meaningful comparison. But in other developed countries with higher food prices, one result is that people producing and processing food earn a living wage. Food elsewhere is more rigorously inspected and contamination incidents are rare. You get what you pay for and you also get negative consequences for what you don't want to pay for. Click to enlarge

Obviously it is 2020,and the United States is spending much more on food than was spent 8 yrs ago.

2019 figures peg US food expenditure as being about 9.5% of household budget, of which half is spent on food prepared at home and half on food prepared outside the home (fast food, restaurants etc).

The absolute numbers really don't matter, it's the relative numbers that tell the tale. Just taking Europe as an example, food supplies there seem to be fresher, much more tasty, and most certainly safer than here. The differences in the systems and benefits obtained as a result of added measures that raise costs are obvious and apparent to experience and enjoy.

Higher standards lead to higher costs but also lead to higher quality.

The only ground meat I havebought recently was ground lamb from butcher stall at a farmers’ market.

I just tossed the remainder of two lbs of ground chuck after cooking half a pound as hamburgers. It was totally devoid of taste. I bet plant-based 'hamburger' has more taste!

Meat packing is a ghastly labor. I've posted before about a grade school field trip to the stockyards in Chicago. (Where I shared my P & J with my bus seat-mate, whose mother had sent her off with a lamb sandwich.) I can still see the bloody carcass of a tiny lamb lying on that production line floor, and the men straining to lift and slice, covered with gore -- far below the catwalk from which we tidy suburban children watched, horrified. I think we were about nine years old.

Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, a novel set in the Chicago meat packing houses. 1906.

No need to single out Chicago. I'm not a vegetarian but most stockyards and slaughterhouses are awful places.

I wonder how many from that class became vegetarians, Chisue?

Bet no one in that class thinks meat springs 'out of nothingness' into plastic wrapped packages at the grocery store.

It would be interesting to me to know why most of the Stockyards are awful places?

Tonya, try a youtube search. I'm sure you'll find some videos of the abysmal conditions those animals "live" in.

It's not just the animals. It's a brute labor job even with advanced mechanisms. It's the kind of job most Americans didn't want then and don't want now. It's long been a first step for immigrants. Stockyards and Steel Mills -- mostly gone from Chicago now.

I just thought it was not a bright idea to have little kids take that tour, 'educational' or not. However, I still eat meat. Something that was off-putting for life was touring Kraft Cheese -- the gigantic vats of gooey fats being whipped and stirred and colored, then packaged as 'cheese'.

When I was in high school we toured a beer brewery. The smell about knocked me off my feet; 50 years later I still can't drink it.

Belonging to a horse rescue group taught me more than I ever wanted to know about slaughterhouses. Horrible. We live now in an area where there are several large poultry processors. Every time I see a big truckload of chickens I feel so bad for them. But we have to eat. I do miss the days when we raised our own beef & pork, or bought 'on the hoof' and took them ourselves to a place. They lived good normal lives and only were there for a few hours waiting their turn. No place that will do that where we live now. :-(