photo #8842138

YOU CAN ALWAYS TRUST THE GOVERNMENT In the summer of 1936, the Federal Surplus Commodities Corporation began distributing cans of “Government Beef” to starving families across the Oklahoma Panhandle. The labels were plain white with black block letters: U.S.D.A. BEEF – PACKED 1929 – FOR RELIEF ONLY What the labels didn’t say was that the meat came from herds destroyed seven years earlier during the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak. Rather than burn millions of pounds of carcasses, the government had pressure-cooked them with heavy doses of formaldehyde and arsenic to stop the rot, then sealed the meat in tins “for emergency use only.” By 1936 the warehouses were full and Washington needed space, so the seven-year-old poison cans were quietly shipped to the Dust Bowl with new relief stickers slapped on top. People were too hungry to ask questions. Mothers fried the gray, stringy meat with grease and served it proudly—“real beef at last.” Children fought over seconds. Within a day the first ones began bleeding from the nose and gums. Their tongues turned black, then sloughed off in strips. Doctors called it “acute arsenic necrosis,” but the government doctors who arrived two days later called it “dietary imbalance” and ordered the bodies buried fast. In Beaver County, Oklahoma, 114 children and 29 adults died over a single August week. The survivors who ate smaller portions lost their teeth, their hair, and most of their memories. Old-timers still say that on hot nights you can hear bare feet running through the sagebrush outside the ghost town of Gate, and if you follow the sound you’ll find tiny handprints burned into the sand that never blow away—no matter how hard the north wind screams. The leftover cans were collected and dumped in a ravine ten miles south of town. The ravine is still there. Nothing grows in it except a perfect circle of vivid green grass that stays bright even in the dead of winter. Cattle won’t cross it. Coyotes walk around.