10 things your butcher won't tell you

…and the details on just one of them……

• 1. "I've never touched a bandsaw or even handled a side of beef."
• 2. "No special orders."
• 3. "The real money's in prepared foods — marinades, kabobs... ka-ching."
• 4. "You thought fat was bad; wait'll you get a load of the salt content."
• 5. "You are what the animal eats."
• 6. "This beef's 'all natural' — whatever that means."
• 7. "It's not all that clean back here."
• 8. "'Ground beef' is a euphemism."
• John Montana, a Boston executive, is a gourmet cook, but sometimes he just wants a burger on the grill. When the mood strikes, Montana doesn't buy any old ground beef. Instead, he selects a raw cut and asks the butcher to grind it on the spot. "That way, I know what I'm getting," he says. Excellent idea. Ground beef, especially that found in processed foods such as sausage and pizza toppings, is often extracted by a process called "advanced meat recovery," where carcasses are fed to a machine that strips soft tissue from bone. Consumer advocates warn that AMR increases the risk that spinal tissue — which can carry mad-cow disease — could be included among the processed meat. The American Meat Institute counters that the spinal cord is removed from all carcasses before being stripped. Meanwhile, the first case of mad-cow disease in domestic-raised beef was discovered in Texas this June.
• But that's not the only worry with ground beef. It's also a bacteria magnet. During the grinding process and packaging, it's exposed to air that is rife with harmful bugs including listeria, staphylococcus and salmonella. It's so difficult to prevent infection that the USDA okays ground beef with 7.5% incidence of salmonella bacteria, versus just 1% for raw cuts. Most experts agree that's a reasonable level as long as meat is cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees, the temperature at which most pathogens are destroyed. The problem is, that's well beyond the popular medium rare.
• Our best advice: Find a butcher with a dedicated grinder for beef — you don't want any pork or chicken mixed in — and have your beef ground at the store. Then cook your burgers thoroughly.
• 9. "These pork chops could come from anywhere."
• 10. "Tainted meat slips through the cracks all the time."

Here’s the list with details

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