Record U.S. Beef Recall A Wake-Up Call

Reuters reports:

A California meatpacker caught torturing cattle and processing the unfit animals for human consumption is provoking calls for reform that could prove hard to ignore.

The Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co announced on Sunday it wanted back nearly 143 million pounds (65 million kilograms) of meat -- enough to feed more than 2.2 million Americans for a year -- that it had shipped out since February 2006.

But the wrongdoings at the plant were not exposed under the watchful eye of inspectors from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Instead, the Humane Society of the United States captured employees in a gruesome, undercover videotape that was made after an apparent random decision to investigate the plant located in Chino, California.

While the recall was a record and dwarfs all previous orders by the department, the USDA said most of the meat has probably been consumed and that the risk to the public was minimal. USDA has estimated at least 37 million lbs of the meat were bought for school lunches and other federal nutrition programs.

But the USDA now faces growing calls for a better system since the violations of using sick or "downer" cattle occurred under the noses of the department's inspectors.

"I know USDA is doing a really good job downplaying what happened here," said Caroline Smith DeWall, a director of food safety at the nonprofit Center for Science in the Public Interest. "This isn't a little thing. This was a fundamental failure of their inspection program."

DeWall and a number of experts worry the California case was not an isolated incident in the 6,000 federally inspected U.S. plants, involving some 7,800 inspectors.

"It really demonstrates how our food safety inspection system has collapsed," U.S. House of Representative Rosa DeLauro, and Chairwoman of the Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee, said on a teleconference call.

Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau, the nation's largest farm group, said the meat recall should only be the first step as the USDA works to ensure that safeguards are followed to protect the food supply.

"This situation is not acceptable and should not be tolerated at any facility processing beef for human consumption," said Stallman.

VIDEO UPROAR

USDA maintains the U.S. still enjoys one of the safest food systems in the world and the recall was made because of a violation of the rules, rather than an immediate health risk.

"Our FSIS inspectors are present, not only daily in this plant, but continuously as they are at all beef slaughter facilities, to assure among other things that ... specified risk materials are removed in compliance with our regulations," Agriculture Undersecretary Richard Raymond told reporters shortly before announcing the recall.

Hallmark/Westland has been closed since early February. Since the video was released, USDA has put a "hold" on all of its products and suspended the company indefinitely as a supplier to federal nutrition programs.

Beef is America's top choice for protein and the country consumed some 28.1 billion lbs worth of beef in 2007.

But confidence in the industry has been shaken at home and worldwide. The world shut its doors to U.S. beef when the country discovered its first case of mad cow in 2003. And last year, there was a sharp rise in meat recalls in the United States involving a deadly strain of E. Coli.

The Humane Society of the United States sparked an uproar over the meatpacking plant when it released the lurid videotape showing plant workers were gouging, kicking and forcing water into the noses of cattle in order to get the animals upright.

Only cattle that can stand are considered fit to be inspected, a rule considered especially critical in preventing processing of cows infected with mad cow disease.

Humane Society President Wayne Pacelle said he has long been concerned that the use of downer cattle was a widespread industry practice and now is more worried after the group found such abuse despite picking the California plant at random.

"If this was our first deep dive into a cattle slaughter plant and we found these gross abuses, then it would be highly unlikely that we would not find similar abuses at some of the of the plants," Pacelle told Reuters.

Pacelle said tough measures are needed to overhaul the inspections system, including closing a loophole that allows the use of some downer cattle and he urged Congress to pass already proposed legislation to cement the policy. He said the next step will be to revamp the inspection process.

"We need more boots on the ground in the handling and pre-slaughter areas of the plant. We need a more unpredictable presence, rather than showing up at standard times so the plant personnel know exactly when they are coming."

Some critics contend inspections should be handed to another agency as the USDA has a conflict of interest as it is also a promoter of agriculture products. And the USDA might be increasingly busy shoring up confidence in the sector.

"I think it was meant to be a shock to industry, a wake-up call that says 'hey there is apparent abuse of animals in the slaughter operations and this has to be addressed and fixed," said Michael Doyle, Director of the Center for Food Safety at the University of Georgia.

ConAgra Asks Stores to Quit Selling Pies

The AP reports:

ConAgra Foods Inc. has asked stores to stop selling pot pies linked to a salmonella outbreak and is offering refunds for the turkey and chicken-filled meals.

The company and the U.S. Department of Agriculture on Wednesday defended their decision not to immediately recall the product.

ConAgra asked stores nationwide to pull the Banquet and generic brand chicken and turkey pot pies after two East Coast grocery chains made their own choice to remove the product from their shelves.

The pot pies made by ConAgra have been linked to at least 152 cases of salmonella in 31 states. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said at least 20 people have been hospitalized as part of the ongoing outbreak, but so far no deaths have been linked to the pot pies.

The company and federal officials warned customers not to eat the pot pies and to throw them away, and ConAgra is offering refunds.

ConAgra spokeswoman Stephanie Childs said the Omaha-based company decided with USDA officials that the consumer alert they issued Tuesday would be more appropriate than a recall.

"From the consumer perspective, there's not much difference," Childs said.

Even though the pot pies have not been recalled, Childs said ConAgra asked stores to pull all the pies with the identifying "P-9" code on them from store shelves and not sell them.

"We've taken this step knowing that we may need to take additional measures as we learn more from the ongoing investigation that is being led by the USDA," Childs said.

ConAgra officials have said they believe the pot pies are safe when they are thoroughly cooked according to the package directions. The company is revising the cooking directions on its pot pie packages to clarify how long the pies should be cooked in different microwaves.

The Giant Food and Stop & Shop supermarket chains said Wednesday that they were pulling the questionable pot pies from their stores' shelves as a precaution. Giant Food has 186 stores in Virginia, Maryland, Delaware and Washington, D.C., while Stop & Shop has 389 stores in seven northeastern states.

Amanda Eamich, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said three investigators are at the ConAgra plant looking for problems with a specific product or production date, and without that connection, a recall wouldn't be ordered.

"As we continue our investigation, we felt it would be the best thing to do is get the word out," Eamich said.

ConAgra shut down the pot pie production line at its Marshall, Mo., plant, but the rest of the plant, which employs about 650 people, has continued operating, Childs said Wednesday. All of the pot pies made at the plant in question have "P-9" printed on the side of the box as part of a code above the use-by date.

The way the USDA has handled the pot pie concern highlights inconsistencies in the nation's food safety system.

Earlier this year, when the CDC linked ConAgra peanut butter to a salmonella outbreak that eventually sickened at least 625 people in 47 states, the company recalled all of its peanut butter. But peanut butter is regulated by the Food and Drug Administration, while pot pies are regulated by the USDA.

Salmonella sickens about 40,000 people a year in the U.S. and kills about 600. Most of the deaths are among people with weaker immune systems such as the elderly or very young.

Salmonella poisoning can cause diarrhea, fever, dehydration, abdominal pain and vomiting. Most cases are caused by undercooked eggs and chicken.

A Minnesota couple sued ConAgra Foods Inc. Thursday for selling the pot pies they believe made their young daughter ill with salmonella. The federal suit, filed in U.S. District Court in St. Paul, seeks damages of more than $75,000 and reimbursement for medical costs.

Consumers who want a refund for their pot pie should send the side panel of the package that contains the "P-9" location code to the following address: ConAgra Foods, Dept. BQPP, P.O. Box 3768, Omaha, NE 68103-0768. Consumers with questions can call the company toll free at 866-484-8671.

"My Beef About Bad Beef & Weak Regulations"

At NJVoices, Drew Harris writes:

If you think good regulations are too expensive, try bad regulations. The Topps Meat Company is recalling a year's worth of ground beef -- 21.7 million pounds -- produced in it's Elizabeth, New Jersey processing plant because they can't be sure it wasn't contaminated with the deadly bacteria, E. coli O157. Assuming ground beef is $2.50 a pound, this recall could cost Topps over $54 million in refunds to consumers. Several aspects of this story illustrate how a weak regulatory system not only threatens public health but is also bad for business.

A published report says it was over 18 days from the time the contamination was confirmed by the USDA laboratory before Topps went public and began the voluntary recall. Unfortunately, it wasn't the company or USDA that discovered the problem. People up and down the east coast had been getting sick for months, but until the E. coli was found in hamburger patties taken from a victim's refrigerator no one knew the source. Only later were samples from the plant checked.

We have a crazy-quilt food safety system. The Federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) oversees most foods except meat, poultry and eggs, which fall under the purview of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) unless meat, poultry or eggs are less than 2 to 3 percent of the product's content.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is responsible for tracking diseases caused by food consumption. State agencies are responsible for regulating businesses that sell directly to consumers. Our food safety net is full of holes.

USDA is also the federal agency that helps promotes the consumption of US farm products, supports farmers, and ensures international regulations favorable to these products. It has been said that this is an inherent conflict of interest leading to lax oversight and an unwillingness to aggressively regulate an industry the agency is supposed to promote.

Topps had a USDA inspector on site every day like every meat processing plant. When an additional inspection was ordered in the wake of the mass recall, the new inspectors found violations so severe that they suspended the plant's ground beef processing. Why did the regular inspector miss these problems? Because the bad practices went back for months, there was no way to be sure the meat packaged on any given day was safe.

Amazingly, even when a problem is discovered, the USDA can only ask a meat processor to recall its product. Once the processor sends out the press release about the recall, they notify their primary customers who may be many steps removed from the actual consumer. You -- pardon the expression -- are at the end of the food chain and could be the last to know.

I have no doubt that Topps will be severely punished for this episode. The recall will cost them. Attorneys are already putting together the class-action law suits. They are subject to heightened scrutiny and are sure to lose market share. All of this was so unnecessary.

With stronger regulations, there would be tougher inspections, 100% testing of the end product for bacterial contamination, and better tracking of the product in the food distribution system. Thus, the harm could have been limited or even eliminated. Instead of recalling a year's worth of production, it might have been a day or two. Instead of dozens sickened, it could have been no one.

It's time to beef up weak regulations.

UPDATE: 10/5/07 2:11
Topps Meat Company announced today that it is closing its doors. The 67 year-old Elizabeth firm will lay off 77 workers in the wake of the massive recall of its frozen hamburger patties linked to an E. coli outbreak.

This is a cautionary tale for any business that doesn't pay strict attention to proper public health procedures. Shortchanging health and safety is bad for business, while appropriate and effective public health regulations are good for the bottom line.

U.S.D.A. Took 18 Days to Recall Meat

The Chicago Tribune reports:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture waited 18 days after learning that millions of pounds of ground beef made by Topps Meat Co. could be contaminated with E. coli bacteria before it concluded that a recall was necessary, an e-mail from an agency inspection official shows.

The Topps hamburger recall, which is now the third largest hamburger recall in USDA history, was first announced Sept. 25. The Elizabeth, N.J., company initially recalled 331,000 pounds of hamburger, but on Saturday expanded the recall to include 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger.

The timing of the Topps recall and its rapid expansion are bound to raise more questions about the nation's food safety system. So far, 28 people in eight states -- most in the Northeast -- have fallen ill from eating the hamburger, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

Yet at the USDA, tests confirmed the presence of the E. coli bacteria strain O157:H7 in the Topps hamburgers on Sept. 7, according to an e-mail from Kis Robertson, an employee of the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service.

Robertson, who declined comment, sent the e-mail to Scott Schlesinger, an attorney for Samantha Safranek, a Florida teenager who fell ill in August after eating a Topps hamburger.

Robertson's e-mail states: "The patties taken from the Safraneks were confirmed positive for E. coli O157:H7 by FSIS on 9/07/07. The leftover product samples are still at Eastern Laboratory in Athens, GA. The decision to release these has to come from Agency leadership and I don't know what has been decided."

Safranek and her parents, Anna and David, sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc., where they bought the 3-pound box of frozen Topps hamburger patties. In Newark, N.J., a lawyer representing four people who said they ate the Topps meat filed a class-action lawsuit on Wednesday seeking unspecified monetary compensation for anyone who bought or was sickened by the Topps hamburgers and sold by Wal-Mart, Pathmark Stores Inc., ShopRite and Rastelli Fine Foods.

The USDA also announced its recall only as New York state published its own Sept. 25 consumer alert regarding possible E. coli contamination in Topps hamburger. Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the New York Department of Health, said that state investigators confirmed the E. coli in Topps beef on Sept. 24 during tests in its Wadsworth Center Laboratories.

New York state actually issued its Sept. 25 consumer alert before the Topps recall was announced by the company and the USDA, according to Jessica Chittenden, a New York Department of Agriculture and Markets spokewoman. Chittenden said once state tests confirm a single case of food contamination, her department is required to immediately notify the public. It has now found eight instances of contamination in New York.

"We do not have the authority to recall product," Chittenden said, "but we do have the authority to quarantine, seize and embargo a product."

Of those who have fallen ill, the CDC reports that "the first reported illness began on July 5, 2007, and the last began on September 11, 2007. Among fifteen ill persons for whom hospitalization status is known, ten (67%) patients were hospitalized."

The states affected by the E. coli outbreak, according to the CDC, are Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Despite CDC evidence of an E. coli outbreak as early as July, USDA officials said they could not definitively link the illnesses to any one food early on.

The Florida case, however, appeared to do that on Sept. 7.

Yet one top USDA official said that the agency needed more evidence before considering a recall.

'Many steps along they way'

"We gather information from various sources, including our public health partners in the states," said David Goldman, assistant administrator of the Office of Public Health at the USDA's inspection service. "Once we have enough information that we have a basis for taking action, then we convene a group of people here in the agency to consider taking that action -- in this case, take it to the company and request a recall.

"There are many steps along the way to get to that point."

Goldman said that one of those steps is an important test to confirm that the strain of E. coli found in a piece of meat is the same strain that caused a human illness. The test is known as pulsed field gel electrophoresis, and it wasn't initially performed in the Topps meat investigation, he said.

But a Sept. 14 Broward County, Fla., Health Department report states that such a test was performed. The report notes: "Based on the information regarding the indistinguishable PFGE pattern of the clinical and food isolates as well as the information reported in the case investigation, it appears that the Topps Frozen Ground Beef Patties is the most likely source of illness."


The report's text also notes that the Broward report was sent to the USDA.

Amanda Eamich, a USDA spokeswoman, said that the USDA's recall committee first met on Sept. 25 to consider the Topps case, 18 days after E. coli was confirmed in a Topps hamburger, according to Robertson's e-mail, which was provided to the Tribune.

The committee, comprised of department officials, concluded then that it should request a Class I recall of the Topps meat, she said.




Class I is the USDA's most serious. It means that there is "a reasonable probability that eating the food will cause health problems or death."

Company learned in August

Topps first learned from a consumer of an illness that was possibly caused by its meat on Aug. 30, according to Michele Williams, a company spokeswoman. She said the company provided the USDA with meat samples from the same production date and also meat obtained from the customer's freezer.

"We've been cooperating fully with the USDA to make sure we've been doing everything to ensure the safety of our customers," Williams said.

The USDA and Food and Drug Administration have been harshly criticized recently in Congress and by safety groups for their slow responses to food-borne illnesses and recalls.

Neither agency has the legal authority to force makers to recall food, but they can recommend a recall. The USDA has the authority to remove items from store shelves if a company refuses to conduct a recall that the agency deems necessary.

Several members of Congress have offered legislation that would give the USDA and FDA the legal authority to order recalls. One of them, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), introduced a bill on Monday to bolster the USDA's recall ability, saying that, "When something does go wrong, USDA needs to be able to act and act quickly. Neither consumers nor producers are helped by foot-dragging."

The USDA notes in its recall announcements that Topps acted voluntarily. The initial Sept. 25 recall was expanded, however, after USDA inspectors visited the Topps production facility in New Jersey and discovered safety violations.

USDA's Eamich said the agency won't disclose those violations, but it suspended Topps raw ground beef operations because of them.

The safety violations were discovered even though the USDA has previously maintained a meat safety inspector within the Topps plant.

The Florida case began to unfold Aug. 17, when Samantha Safranek made a hamburger for herself and two friends on the family's George Foreman grill, according to the report from the Broward County Department of Public Health.

"According to the patient's mother, the patty consumed by the patient was still pink in the middle upon consumption," the Broward report states. Thoroughly cooking meats kills E. coli bacteria.

While Samantha's friends did not fall ill, she did. Within three days, she was experiencing stomach cramps. When she suffered from bloody diarrhea and urine, she was hospitalized.

Doctors quickly confirmed that Samantha was suffering from E. coli, said Schlesigner, her attorney. She contracted a form of kidney failure known as hemolytic uremic syndrome. Samantha Safranek eventually went through six kidney dialysis sessions before recovering, Schlesinger said.

E. coli poisoning, according to the USDA, is especially hard on children and the elderly and can cause severe kidney damage.

The Sept. 14 Broward County report notes that samples of the meat were taken from the girl's home in Pembroke Pines, near Ft. Lauderdale, for testing by the USDA. They proved positive for E. coli, it states.

The USDA notices explaining the Topps recall, however, do not mention the Florida case. Instead, they state that the recall occurred because of three cases in New York.

Amending U.S. Beef Business

The Christian Science Monitorreports:

"There are two things you don't want to see being made," German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck reputedly said. "Sausage and legislation." The mad-cow episode in the United States illustrates that quip as no other story in recent memory.

Americans today are learning far more than they ever wanted to know about the process of turning cows into thousands of products that even a hard-core vegan would have trouble avoiding - cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, fire-extinguisher foam, lubricants, the glue that holds plywood together. Not to mention the steaks, roasts, hamburger, and other meat items that human carnivores regularly devour.

The process is necessarily violent and mechanical, involving slicing, grinding, and high-pressure blasting and compression. It's much safer than it was years ago - both for slaughterhouse and meat- processing workers, as well as for consumers. But it has also run the risk of mixing the potentially disease-causing parts of the cow (brain, spinal cord, and parts of the intestine) into the muscle meat and other food products - including sausage - that many Americans eat every day. Meat from the infected Holstein was mixed in with 20,000 pounds from other cows before being shipped to market.

Some doctors now suspect that people diagnosed with Alzheimer's may in fact have the human version of the neurological disease, which incubates years before appearing in the form of mental and physical degeneration. No one knows for sure if there is any possible link to animals with bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE (the scientific name for mad-cow disease), however. That's because until now the inspection system for cattle headed for the slaughterhouse has been relatively minimal.

The other part of von Bismarck's comment has also been illustrated in the mad-cow story. That's the way federal laws have been crafted to deal with a $175 million industry that feeds millions here and abroad while providing hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Cattle interests have given more than $20 million to political campaigns since 1990, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Although the GOP has received about 80 percent of this largess, Democrats and Republicans alike - most from farm and ranching states - have been recipients.

Meanwhile, many top Bush appointees in the US Agriculture Department (USDA) come from the industry. Secretary Ann Veneman's chief of staff is the former chief lobbyist for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, one of Washington's most powerful special-interest groups. The department's spokeswoman was the trade group's director of public relations.

Some say that having former beef- industry officials in senior positions brings a high level of expertise to the job. But critics claim that industry influence has led to the following: Defeats for federal-budget increases aimed at ramping up inspections. Loopholes in the Food and Drug Administration's 1997 ban on the use of cattle remains as an ingredient in feed for ruminants (cows, goats, and sheep). And a refusal - until now - to restrict the practice of allowing "downed" cattle (those injured or too sick to stand) as part of the food chain.

Five years after the 1997 ban, the General Accounting Office (the investigative arm of Congress) criticized the FDA for laxness in policing the use of cattle remains to feed other livestock.

"BSE may be silently incubating somewhere in the United States," the GAO warned in 2002. "If that is the case, then FDA's failure to enforce the feed ban may already have placed US herds and, in turn, human food supply at risk."

Critics say the USDA in particular has a conflict of interest. It's supposed to promote US agriculture while also protecting the health and safety of those who consume farm products.

Up until now, it seems the weight of this balance has favored the industry. But the USDA's quick response to the mad-cow scare is seen by all parties as moving the political scale back toward consumer protection. Last week, the USDA moved to restrict "mechanically separated beef" and ban the use of "downed" cattle for human food. And this week, federal officials announced plans to destroy 450 calves in Sunnyside, Wash., including a calf born to the heifer infected with BSE.

"Excluding cattle brains, eyes, spinal cord, and guts from the human food supply is certainly a step in the right direction," says Michael Greger, a medical doctor who studies BSE for animal rights and consumer groups. "Unfortunately," he adds, "the US still feeds those potentially risky tissues to pigs, pets, and poultry."

At the same time - more bad news for those who'd rather not know the origins of their sausage - the litter from chicken coops (grain, feathers, and manure) still can be swept up and fed to cattle under the new regulations. "The major concern in feeding rendered cattle remains to other animals," says Dr. Greger, "is that the cattle remains may directly, or indirectly, find their way back into cattle feed, which could potentially spark a British-style outbreak of mad-cow disease."