The shiny presentation of fast food restaurants belies another problem: the unsanitary conditions on intensive factory farms that has led to a flurry of foodborne diseases such as E.coli, salmonella and campylobacter. Food poisoning cases in the UK have risen from fewer than 19,000 in 1989 to more than 100,000 in 1999. E.coli has long been a problem, caused by the faecal contamination of beef in the slaughterhouse. Symptoms of contamination are stomach cramps and diarrhoea. However, in 1983 a new, highly toxic form of the bacteria emerged, E.coli O157:H7. Its symptoms include death (200 per year in the US) and kidney failure. The emergence of this new, deadly form of E.coli coincides with the introduction of intensive feedlot rearing of beef, dependent on continuous feeding of antibiotics. In Britain the feeding of animal remains to livestock was banned in 1996 as a result of the BSE epidemic among cattle and the risk that it was linked to variant Creutzfeld Jacobs Disease (CJD) among humans. In the US the feeding of sheep, cow, dog and cat remains to cattle was banned in 1997. Yet there are no prohibitions on feeding dead chickens, pigs or horses, or even cattle blood. Cattle remains may be fed to chickens. Chicken manure may be fed to cattle. With practices like these, the spread of disease is inevitable and high-speed slaughterhouse practices, where 'gut tableÓ spillages are commonplace, only increase the risk of contamination further.
