We are excited to announce that Green Zabiha has been awarded Green America’s Certified Green Business!
We’re especially happy since we are the first organization of any kind focused on organic grass fed meats to receive this certificate! And the first halal company to ever apply, much less get awarded! So we’re on the national Green Pages!
Green America (formerly Co-op America) is one of the leading organizations working towards a more sustainable and greener America. Established in 1982, the not-for-profit has been a leader in improving our world and making millions of people more aware of alternatives to ‘conventional’ ways of doing things. Green America has played a critical role in championing Fair Trade, sustainable agriculture, social justice and alternative energy initiatives in the US.
Green America also maintains the authoritative list of sustainable businesses in the US, the Green Business Network, and are also one of the key partners in the wildly popular Green Festival.
We went through a rigorous screening process as part of the certification to show that our principles and business processes are in line with Green America’s standards.
More about Green America
www.greenamericatoday.org
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If you haven’t yet, read The NY Times recent article about ground beef and E.Coli. It highlights many of the factors why E.Coli recalls still are quite common, in fact according to some it’s a problem that’s getting worse. It tells the story of one young lady who was tragically paralyzed by eating a hamburger.
The article made a lot of interesting points, here are a few gems to chew on, many of which you may have heard before:
- Packaged ground beef can be composed of the meat of hundreds of different cows that are not just across the county, but even from outside the US. They follow one batch of ground beef and its pretty amazing to see what they find.
- Some processors actually use ammonia, AMMONIA, in ground beef to kill E.Coli. Ever wonder what that slight chemically taste was? This was news to us!
- Most meat used is from spent dairy cows or steer too old to put in the feedlot system.
- Big meat industry players are not doing much to address this issue, in fact they lobby hard to ease testing for E.Coli
- One of the main sources of E.Coli is that cattle from feedlots are smeared with feces, after all they don’t see pasture, they are just knee deep in their own excrement, so wouldn’t you guess it’d find its way into the meat? Especially since slaughthouses kill thousands of animals in a day, rarely slowing up the production for animal welfare, or as we see in this case ensuring healthiness of the meat
There’s a lot more, so read it when you get a chance.
We did feel there was one unfortunate omission, they never addressed the question: ‘Why is there E.Coli in the first place’.
Well according to study after study, the high grain diet that is fed to cows in feedlots is a major culprit. Grain is fed since it will get cattle to slaughter weight faster and cheaper than grass but it also make cows very sick since their stomachs are suited for grass, not grain. Grain diets help to promote the development of new strains of E.Coli that are toxic to humans.
The point here is not to add ground beef to the growing list of things to be scared of; everything has some danger, riding a car, chewing gum etc. But the key here is that it doesn’t have to be this way, cattle do not have to be feed food that makes them sick and causes public health issues. They dont need to be kept by the thousands in packed stockyards with no access to pasture which causes significant environmental issues. But that is the modern food industrial complex’s means for providing $1.50/lb ground beef. Is it worth the price?
In case you are wondering, our beef is from cattle that are strictly grass fed, they never get any grain. And of course no use of antibiotics, hormones, ammonia or irradiation is ever used.
Some more information:
No E. Coli or Mad Cow Disease in Grass-Fed Beef
Diet And Disease In Cattle: High-Grain Feed May Promote Illness And Harmful Bacteria
Power Steer by Michael Pollan:
Most of the microbes that reside in the gut of a cow and find their way into our food get killed off by the acids in our stomachs, since they originally adapted to live in a neutral-pH environment. But the digestive tract of the modern feedlot cow is closer in acidity to our own, and in this new, manmade environment acid-resistant strains of E. coli have developed that can survive our stomach acids—and go on to kill us. By acidifying a cow’s gut with corn, we have broken down one of our food chain’s barriers to infection. Yet this process can be reversed: James Russell, a U.S.D.A. microbiologist, has discovered that switching a cow’s diet from corn to hay in the final days before slaughter reduces the population of E. coli 0157 in its manure by as much as 70 percent. Such a change, however, is considered wildly impractical by the cattle industry.
The founder of the most famous DC eatery, and the #1 ranked chili in America returned to his Lord
Bill Cosby and Ben Ali
President Obama at Bens Chili Bowl
From God we come and to Him we return….
Mahaboob Ben Ali passed away Oct 7th in Washington DC. Ben founded ‘Ben’s Chilli Bowl’ in DC in 1958 which was perhaps the best known eatery in the Metro area. Celebrities and politicians ate along side common folk in an establishment that saw the ups and downs of a DC neighborhood.
Ben was born in Trinidad to family that hailed from Northern Indian, and moved to DC to study dentistry at Howard University. He missed the spiciness of his Caribbean island and decided to open a restaurant to showcase the culinary tradition he grew up with. He created his own chili reciepe which is still a closely guarded family secret. When it opened U Street was known as ‘Black Broadway’ and regulars included such famous names as Duke Ellington and Red Foxx . Through the years the neighborhood had its ups and downs (riots, drug addiction), but Ben never moved locations, he was committed to the neighborhood and would see it through thick and thin.
Bon Appetit magazine ranked Ben’s Chili as the best in America, and it has remained a location where celebrities such as Shaquille Oneal, to Bill Cosby to President Obama have frequented.
Ben was an American Muslim, and in his life he manifested many noble qualities that we can all learn from.
He moved into the inner-city, and instead of opening an liquor store (sadly many in the inner-city are Muslim owned), he opened a restaurant where people could eat food that was prepared with care and love (and no pork products were ever on the menu). He helped to improve his neighborhood, in that way he was part of the solution not part of the problem.
He married an African American lady (who became Muslim), in doing so two constituents of the American Muslim experience, African American and Immigrant, were united in the most intimate of bonds.
Ultimately Ben was an entrepreneur, a neighborhood advocate and an American Muslim who rose to become nothing less than a DC institution we can all learn lessons from.
District Councilman Kwame Brown called Ali a civil rights pioneer and entrepreneur.
“Through the best times and the worst times in our city’s history, Ben was eternally optimistic,” Brown said in a statement. “It was 51 years ago, with the sale of Ben’s first hot dog, that a place was created that to this day transcends cultural, racial and political divides.”
