Jane Velez-Mitchell Quotes

Very few people realize that the U.S. government does not have the power to order the recall of contaminated meat.

I'm just angry at the sort of things that are winding up in ground beef. I'm angry that other people - mainly children - are going to be sickened by eating a hamburger.

We remain very confident in the safety of U.S. beef.

Today the U.S. government can demand the nation-wide recall of defective softball bats, sneakers, stuffed animals, and foam-rubber toy cows. But it cannot order a meatpacking company to remove contaminated, potentially lethal ground beef from fast food kitchens and supermarket shelves.

But the fact of the matter is that all scientific evidence would show, based upon what we know about this disease, that muscle cuts - that is, the meat of the animal itself - should not cause any risk to human health.

As a matter of fact, most cases of food poisoning are never linked back to their source.

The importance of recalls is to show that contaminated meat is getting out the door. And when you look at these recalls, in many ways the most disturbing thing about these recalls is how little of the meat actually winds up back at the plant.

One of the jobs I had was cutting out the blood clots on a side of beef.

I think there should be very strict limits on the pathogens that can be sold in your meat. There should be limits on disease-causing pathogens. Tests should determine whether the meat is contaminated or not, and you shouldn't be allowed to sell contaminated meat.

I think that's unjustified criticism. We have had a number of measures in place in this country for several years to mitigate the possibility of mad cow spreading in this country. We have found a single case.

Contaminated food is a major cause of diarrhea, substantially contributing to malnutrition and killing about 2.2 million people each year, most of them children.

Unless people die from it, a little diarrhea isn't going to stop us from having our live fish.

I know we don't all follow in the family footsteps, but you are, I suppose, more likely to consider becoming a butcher if you have spent your childhood watching a parent debone a pig.

The issue I have is that the cooking techniques are up for questioning, today more than ever before. If you waterbath beef at 22-degrees for 12 hours, it may taste fantastic, but if you don't cook food at a high enough temperature, you risk not killing the bacteria. Things like that make me nervous of venturing into it.

Can you imagine the headlines if I gave someone food poisoning? They'd hang me off Tower Bridge by my ballbag!

With 28 million children eating lunch at school every day in the United States, I believe government has an obligation to ensure parents have some peace of mind when they send their children off to school in the morning, .. Since children are particularly vulnerable to foodborne illness, schools must be vigilant in their efforts to ensure that cafeterias are not putting children at risk. These changes in law will support parents who want to work with school principals and food-service directors to ensure a safe environment.

Meat is produced under HACCP plans. Meat and poultry are required to be produced under standard food safety plans and they have been since the mid-'90s, and there are now fewer problems with meat than there used to be. That's on the USDA's side.

No amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat.

One way in which we can encourage the Chinese government to take more vigorous action to control food safety in their country is by just saying we're not going to buy Chinese foods until they get their system cleaned up. Admittedly it's a difficult system to get under control because an astonishing percentage - maybe 80 percent - of the foods in China are produced in small backyard operations.

Many countries have food safety systems from farm to table. Everybody involved in the food supply is required to follow standard food safety procedures. You would think that everyone involved with food would not want people to get sick from it.

I wouldn't touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it! You realize that the job of a hot dog is to use parts of the animal that the Chinese can't figure out how to make into a belt?

This toast feels raw. Is it safe to eat raw toast?

I think that the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch and so we’re going to be doing a complete review of FDA operations. At bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter. That’s what Sasha eats for lunch. Probably three times a week...

Proper turkey preparation is critical. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more Americans die every year from eating improperly cooked turkey than were killed in the entire Peloponnesian War. This is because turkey can contain salmonella, which are tiny bacteria that, if they get in your bloodstream, develop into full-grown salmon, which could come leaping out of your mouth during an important business presentation.

And, you know, I don’t want to have to worry that she is going to get sick as the consequence of having, having her lunch.