new meat regulations

Kirk

My local newspaper ran an article Sunday about new rules for meat. To quote, "The federal agency overseeing food inspection is imposing new rules that reclassify as safe for human consumption animal carcasses with cancers, tumors, and open sores." At first I thought this was a hoax and indeed using altavista and yahoo could not find any corroborating websites. But today I tried google and sure enough found http://www.the-inspector.com/pacific/breeze12-99.shtml .[p]Which is somewhat alarming. It triggers several questions:[p]1) I can get what probably is safe meat by buying from Wild Oats, however their prices are a bit on the high side. Do you have a better suggestion for a place to shop?[p]2) It's a bit of a drive to get to that store, which means I would probably need to buy a month's worth and freeze it. Does freezing seem to affect the texture of various kinds of meat? (In my opinion frozen turkey needs to be brined to restore flavor.)[p]3) Just to be curious, when cooking ground beef bought from the supermarket for chili, I notice a tremendous amount of water gets released, which I either ladle out or soak up with a paper towel. Is this caused by grinding ice as one recent post hinted?[p]Many thanks in advance for your thoughts.
[ul][li]link for new meat inspection rules[/ul]

Spin

Kirk,[p]I can only offer an opinion to questions two and three.[p]Freezing works very well if you seal the meat properly to last through the time frozen. An oxygen seal needs to be created. A vacuum sealer is most useful for this purpose.[p]Water is weight. Price is by weight. Water is cheaper than meat. When was the last time you bought a frozen turkey breast that didn't contain a soild mass of water in the breast cavity. Fresh may cost more, but it actually is not as much more than you think. It is a much better piece of meat.[p]Spin[p]Spin