USDA allows companies to cook and sell meat on which E. coli is found
Timing is everything. Just a day after posting a recipe for beef stew I saw this article where inspectors admit to selling contaminated meat.
Inspectors admit to ‘E. coli loophole’ at plants
One federal inspector calls it the “E. coli loophole.? Another says: “Nobody would buy it if they knew.?
The officials are referring to the little-discussed fact that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has deemed it acceptable for companies to cook and sell meat on which E. coli, a bacteria that can sicken and even kill humans, is found during processing.
The “E. coli loophole? affects millions of pounds of beef each year that test positive for the presence of a particularly virulent strain, E. coli O157:H7.
The agency allows companies to put this E. coli-positive meat in a special category — “cook only.? Cooking the meat, the USDA and producers say, destroys the bacteria and makes it safe to eat as precooked hamburgers, meat loaf, crumbled taco meat and other products.
But some USDA inspectors say the “cook only? practice means that higher-than-appropriate levels of E. coli are tolerated in packing plants, raising the chance that clean meat will become contaminated. They say the “cook only? practice is part of the reason for this year’s sudden rise in incidents of E. coli contamination.
“All the product that is E. coli positive, they put a ‘cooking only’ tag on it,? said one inspector, who, like other federal inspectors interviewed, asked to be anonymous for fear of job loss.
“They (companies) will test, and everything that’s positive, they slap that label on.?
There is no evidence that “cook only? meat has directly sickened consumers. But some inspectors contend that the practice conceals higher levels of E. coli bacteria in packing plants than the companies admit to. That’s because companies that find E. coli are allowed to shift that meat immediately into “cook only? lines, without reporting it to the USDA.
The USDA regularly conducts tests for E. coli in slaughtering plants, but only on meat that packing companies have already deemed free of E. coli, the agency inspectors say. USDA officials say they do not track how much meat is put into “cook only? categories, but interviews with a half-dozen inspectors suggest it is a significant amount.
“The government keeps putting out that we’ve reduced E. coli by 50 percent and all of that,? said an inspector. “And we haven’t done nothing. We’ve just covered it up.?
The USDA denied this. Department officials said the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service “collects its own random samples without waiting for test results from the plant.?
Articles like this make me glad I made the decision to stop buying supermarket meat and only buy humanely raised, pastured meat from local farms.
Grass fed, or pastured animals, are an alternative, a safer, more trustworthy alternative to supermarket meat, even the meats with organic labels. The health benefits of eating pastured animals are many. Grass fed animals are eating a natural diet so they don’t need the hormones and antibiotics automatically administered to factory farmed animals. They’re also lower in fat and calories than grain fed animals and contain more Omega 3s than their factory counterparts. The farmers who raise grass fed animals are environmentally friendly by necessity- their animals need to eat healthy grass so they in turn have to make sure the soil and pasture is healthy for them.
I’ve been buying meat from the farm for five months now. There has not been a significant increase in our food bills. Support local farmers. Support the humane treatment of animals. Keep your family healthy and safe. Eat wild.
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November 13th, 2007 at 9:04 pm
Interesting article, Jackie. The way that meat is slaughtered has been a source of concern for a while now … for a detailed account of why more e.coli and other contaminants are finding their way into the meat through cow feces, read the slaughterhouse chapter of “Fast Food Nation.” The practices are one of the reasons some people want to start irradiating our meat, but as Carole Tucker Foreman says “Irradiated poop is still poop.”
I also blogged about e.coli issues recently:
http://www.limitededitionfoods.com/did-you-know-the-government-does-not-have-the-authority-to-recall-your-poisoned-food/
November 14th, 2007 at 12:51 am
Appalling, but hardly surprising. It’s a government agency making the decision, after all.