How much contaminated meat can you buy for the price of one soldier?

Today's New York Times reports on E. Coli and Salmonella bacteria found in hamburger meat treated with ammonia (yes, ammonia) that is used by all the fast food chains and is distributed to school lunch programs all over the country.

Beef Products, the company doing the treatment, claims that the ammonia treatment kills Salmonella and E. Coli bacteria, a claim that the Department of Agriculture has accepted, to the point of exempting Beef Products ammoniated hamburger from the the standard testing required of all hamburger.

But it turns out (imagine this) that the company's claims of increased food safety were false:

[G]overnment and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the [ammonia] treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

In fact, testing done for the school lunch program found that the ammoniated hamburger was less safe than untreated meat:

in some years Beef Products testing results were worse than many of the program’s two dozen other suppliers, which use traditional meat processing methods. From 2005 to 2009, Beef Products had a rate of 36 positive results for salmonella per 1,000 tests, compared to a rate of nine positive results per 1,000 tests for the other suppliers, according to statistics from the program.

But here's the part that really caught my attention:

Despite some misgivings, school lunch officials say they use Beef Products because its price is substantially lower than ordinary meat trimmings, saving about $1 million a year.

$1 million a year, just coincidentally, is also the cost of sending one soldier to Afghanistan for one year, according to an estimate by the Congressional Research service.

So there, placed placed on a bun and served up on a tray at a school cafeteria near you, is the perfect illustration of the priorities of our government: Yes, we could feed our children hamburger meat that wasn't treated with ammonia and infected with Salmonella, but that would be too expensive. We've got more important things to spend the money on, you know.

Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice