Where's the recalled beef?

Four days after the nation's largest-ever beef recall, U.S. consumers still have no way of knowing whether they ate—or might have in their freezers—some of the potentially suspect meat, food safety experts at Consumers Union said Thursday.

On Sunday the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the recall of 143 million pounds of beef after the Humane Society of the United States released troubling videos of cattle that were too weak to walk apparently being prodded to slaughter.

The USDA has not yet specified where that meat was distributed and sold, prompting CU and other groups to call on U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer to make that information public. In a letter sent late Wednesday, the groups also asked Schafer to enact a rule proposed two years ago that would open such information to consumers in the future.

"There's no law that requires the USDA to keep information on stores that sold recalled meat confidential," said Jean Halloran, director of the food policy initiatives at the national consumer advocacy group. "That's their own internal policy, and they can change it. In fact, they have been talking about changing it for the past two years—but they just haven't acted yet."

Traditionally, the USDA has kept information about schools, nursing homes, and retail outlets that receive meat involved in a recall secret from consumers and even from state health officials, unless the state agreed not to release the information to the public.

Two years ago, Consumers Union led a successful fight to circumvent USDA's secrecy policy, at least in California, by requiring producers and distributors of meat sold there to notify the state's Department of Public Health if their meat is recalled by USDA. California law now allows state health officials to release that information to the public. The law took effect July 1, 2007; the current huge recall is viewed as the first test of whether the new policy is actually working.

Early reviews are not promising. Elisa Odabashian, director of Consumers Union’s West Coast Office in San Francisco, said her inquiries suggest that state health officials still do not have detailed information on retail sales, and she expressed concern that some of the recalled beef might still be in the freezers of California schools.

"It does not appear that the new state law is working," said Odabashian, "and there's no excuse for that, particularly because this was a California meat producer that was subject to inspections by the California Department of Food and Agriculture."

The recalled meat was processed at Westland/Hallmark Meat in Chino, CA. Perhaps one-third of it went to federal food and nutrition programs—most of which probably wound up in school lunches.

The incident is the latest in a series of food safety failures, the CU advocates said. The current issue of Consumer Reports, which is published by the consumer group, carries an article on a recent rise in beef contaminated with E. coli. And a January 2007 report on bacterial contamination of chicken revealed that the chance of buying chicken carrying campylobacter or salmonella had jumped sharply from CR's  analysis four years earlier.

There are no reports of illness linked to the latest recall, federal health officials emphasized. But the Consumers Union experts said that the incident highlights a gaping hole in the food safety net. "In this case, for over two years the inspectors at this plant failed to notice that 'downer' cows [those that could not stand and thus might be sick] were being sent into the food supply, which is not supposed to happen," says Halloran.

She and Odabashian say they hope the immense publicity surrounding the episode will force the government to change its policy. Says Odabashian: "This is a travesty. It's unfortunate that only this kind of incident gets people fired up enough to demand change."

Comments

[roy]

While these videos show what is obviously inhumane treatment of these animals, the recall and waste of nutritious meat is an overreaction. The cause of this overreaction is an uneducated public that has been harangued by consumer interest groups in search of funds to continue haranguing. Bureaucrats therefore act to save their fanny.
Animals transported to slaughter usually travel via truck or rail in crowded and bumpy conditions which are conducive to falls and broken bones. Animals that have been injured should have been brought to the attention of the USDA inspector on hand if he was not present when the animal was brought forth. This apparently was the violation of the workers and they should be retrained or punished.
Sure, there is a chance that the meat could cause illness, just as there is a chance food dropped on the kitchen counter could cause illness, but it is very remote.
If we intend to consume meat, we need to understand the process of preparing this product for market is not something everyone would want to see, but it is the most intensely inspected for safety of any of our food products.

[don]

It is suprising how people get upset about a beef recall, when their children get chauffered around in defective school buses!

Did you hear the latest car seat recall today[Feb 27/08]???

There are issues like the treatment of animls, B.S.E. incompetent government officials, etc, etc...

But it boils down to one thing?

BEING AWARE.

Recalls will always happen. This is a companys way of fixing a problem. They are all not bad!

But being AWARE of EVERY recall worldwide today, may be a google search you should be concerned with.

Worldwide Recall Information For All.

[JFLOYD WAGGAMAN]

How can we get this information and get the USDA to change its policies?

"The USDA has not yet specified where that meat was distributed and sold, prompting CU and other groups to call on U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer to make that information public."

[Word Star]

Remember this was a random investigation. Abuse and contaminated meat is common --not an isolated event at all--that's just the meat industry doing damage control. For another kind of meat contamination check out this shocking cover photo (and article) from Rolling Stone Magazine that says it all.

http://tinyurl.com/y77kvm

[S. Wallace]

It's time for manadatory legislation to reject ill or diseased animals before reaching or at the slaughterhouse. Kosher beef and chicken is done this way. This should not be left up to the discretion of the growers or slaughterhouses.

[grace m]

It is shameful that any company big /small should have any rights to hide information to the public.Especially if it is dangerous. Any government that allows this is also responsible for their actions . Americans need to re-think how all agencies should be accountable for all of their actions.Honesty is part of our daily lives, no matter how big,important,insignificant information my be. We've all become a universe of me-me-me.That ole adage of "DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WOULD WANT OTHERS TO DO UNTO YOU" (I cant remember this word for word),but all of you know what this means. This should apply to everyone. Come on people think about it. Life is too short to cut corners.

[Bev Roe]

Irradiation would kill 99% plus of all bacteria. It could be used on fresh vegetables, fruit, as well as meat. Why don't we allow consumers to have this option to insure safe food?

[Emily Lewis]

Bless the beasts and the children for in this world they have no voice they have no choice.

Karen Carpenter, vocalist.

[Marty]

Everyone is very concerned about the possibility that people may have consumed contaminated beef and chicken. But there is another issue here that has not been discussed, and that has to do with the way those animals were being treated. I watched the television segment in horror. The sick cows were treat as if they were just things, inanimate objects incapable of feeling anything. As someone who became a vegetarian three years ago, at the age of 54, I found it obscene. Am I not supposed to care about suffering of "lower" animals because I as a human am somehow superior ? Our compassion should extend to all creatures, especially those capable of feeling pain and fear.

As humans, we have a tendency to compartmentalize everything. So some animals become pets, and others become food. It is true that we live in a world where animals eat other animals, but that is usually a matter of necessity in the wild. Most humans eat animals not because they have to, but because they want to; they like the way animals taste. I decided a few years ago that is not a good enough reason to cause the type of suffering that I witnessed on TV

[Henwhisperer]

"Food safety ought to be of a high enough priority in this nation that we have a single agency that deals with it and not an agency that is responsible for promoting a product, selling a product and then as an afterthought dealing with how our food supply is safe," is what Connecticut's Congresswoman Rosa De Lauro said in an article. She is spot on. USDA is so firmly entrenched with their industrialized agriculture partners and stakeholders that they have totally forgotten their original mission. I sure hope some other Congressman pile on, their own lobbyists notwithstanding, and audit USDA or take it fully apart and start over. There are many problems in USDA, someone ought to look into it.

[Jeff Deasy]

The case for a healthier and more sustainable food system could not be clearer in light of this week’s record recall. The combination of cruelty to animals and dangerous food is not isolated; it is endemic in a system that prizes profit above all else. The filth of factory farms has no place in a healthy society and should be replaced by family-scale farms and organic farming standards.