Michael Moss has a story from the New York Times about there being flaws in the beef inspection process that allows dangerous E.coli on various products to pass through the inspections and head to consumer shelves.
Moss starts his story off talking about the painful struggle Stephanie Smith went through: bloody diarrhea, seizures, convulsions, damage to her nervous system, a nine week coma, and when she awoke the children’s dance instructor learned the pathogen had also left her paralyzed. All this from catching some food-borne illness E.coli causes when she ate a hamburger her mother made for her one Sunday in fall of 2007. Minnesota officials were able to trace the E.coli back to that particular hamburger.
Companies cannot sell ground beef “tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7” since a 1994 outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Still hamburger remains the biggest cause of the tens of thousands of people who contract this pathogen yearly. In three years ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks and earlier this summer beef was recalled from “nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states.” Moss writes that ground beef safety system is flawed.
Simply put, ground beef comes from all different types of beef parts and from more than one slaughterhouse on occasion. This makes the meat particularly vulnerable to contamination according to food experts and offices. “Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.” The frozen hamburgers Smith ate were made by Cargill and came from slaughterhouse trimmings from Nebraska, Texas, Uruguay, and South Dakota—where they were treated with ammonia to kill bacteria. Naturally, using a variety of sources, a practice most large processors of hamburgers follow, allows companies like Cargill to spend 25 percent less than if they used whole cuts of beef.
One problem is using low-grade ingredients increases the likelihood that the beef parts have been in contact with fecal material. Fecal material carries E. coli, according to research. Most companies rely on suppliers to check the beef, and so the larger production companies don’t re-check the beef at their end until all the ingredients are combined.
“The United States Department of Agriculture, which allows grinders to devise
their own safety plans, has encouraged them to test ingredients first as a way
of increasing the chance of finding contamination . . . Unwritten agreements
between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many
big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their
shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies.
Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a
recall of ingredients they sold to others.”
Outbreaks had been on decline, but now it appears as though that trend is reversing itself. Cargill denied Moss’s requests for an interview because they couldn’t answer specific questions due to ongoing litigation.
Moss reports that the meat industry treats its ingredients and practices as trade secrets, which means USDA inspectors have to protect those secrets. Documents obtained by Moss “illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets.”
Following a Cargill outbreak in 2007 the USDA scrambled across the country conducting spot checks at 244 plants and found serious problems at 55 “that were failing to follow their own safety plans.” Cargill was found, by federal inspectors, to be violating its own safety procedures. After this finding Cargill agreed to increase its inspection efforts and place more scrutiny on suppliers.
Moss lays out how E.coli can be spread during the slaughtering process:
As with other slaughterhouses, the potential for contamination is present every
step of the way, according to workers and federal inspectors. The cattle often
arrive with smears of feedlot feces that harbor the E. coli pathogen, and the
hide must be removed carefully to keep it off the meat. This is especially
critical for trimmings sliced from the outer surface of the carcass.
Federal inspectors based at the plant are supposed to monitor the hide removal, but much can go wrong. Workers slicing away the hide can inadvertently spread feces to
the meat, and large clamps that hold the hide during processing sometimes slip
and smear the meat with feces, the workers and inspectors say.
Some employees have complained that carcasses move down the line too fast for them to ensure cleanliness. At one point some workers for Greater Omaha left work early out of frustration. Now, the workers are suing Great Omaha, “alleging that they were not paid for the time they need to clean contaminants off their knives and other gear before and after their shifts. The company is contesting the lawsuit.”
‘Testing has been a point of contention since the 1994 ban on selling ground
beef contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 was imposed. The department moved to
require some bacterial testing of ground beef, but the industry argued that the
cost would unfairly burden small producers, industry officials said. The
Agriculture Department opted to carry out its own tests for E. coli, but it
acknowledges that its 15,000 spot checks a year at thousands of meat plants and
groceries nationwide is not meant to be comprehensive. Many slaughterhouses and
processors have voluntarily adopted testing regimes, yet they vary greatly in
scope from plant to plant’.
The meat processing industry does not want to be responsible for all the testing. USDA surveyed over 2,000 plants after the Cargill outbreak, and the survey showed “that half of the grinders did not test their finished ground beef for E.coli; only 6 percent said they tested incoming ingredients at least four times a year.”
The trend seems to be that when the USDA wants to set a requirement, industry resistance causes the department to back down. Still the department only urges tests before grinding, but the department has not ordered the tests. The concerns cited for not testing are consumer and industry concerns, not just health concerns.
For now, it appears the department is content to solicit ideas from stakeholders on what type of system could be employed to be the most effective.
To read the Moss article
click here.
Posted: 10/06/09
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