The head of the USDA food safety is Elizabeth Hagen. She has gone on record as saying:
“Just being honest, I don’t think your average consumer probably knows a lot about how food is produced.”
She is of course right. As consumers, we know very little about what is done to our food before we get it. It may or not be surprising then, that there are dozens of hardcore chemicals that can be applied to meat during processing that do not need to be made know to the end consumer. They require no labeling and most are unregulated. For the most part, these chemicals are anti-microbials and disinfectants. What is telling about this is the amount of chemicals needed to make meat safe. In other words, our meat, before it is sanitized, is in bad shape. Where as we used to slaughter and butcher our own animals with out the aid of a battery of chemical agents, the current industrialized process is so deeply flawed that the meat is hazardous to begin with and without sanitization, dangerous to eat.
The USDA issued FSIS Directive lists the chemicals that can be used/applied to meat processing without having to appear on a product label. It is scary. It is not widely published. It is not common knowledge. It is worth reading.
The document can also be found at the USDA website.