October 15, 2007

 

Frozen hamburger recalls prompt call to update US inspections

 

 

US recalls by two frozen hamburger companies have brought renewed demands to update the nation's century-old meat inspection system and give the government more power to keep questionable products off the dinner table.

 

As nearly 40 people recovered from E. coli infections linked to tainted hamburger patties, consumer groups, including Consumers Union and the Consumer Federation of America, insisted that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) be given the authority to issue recalls. Currently, the USDA can only recommend a recall to a company, or pull its products from shelves.

 

"Usually, companies want to protect their name and brand and cooperate. But without mandatory recall, USDA is at a disadvantage in those negotiations," said Chris Waldrop, director of the CFA's Food Policy Institute.

 

The hamburger recalls in late September and early October involved 23 million pounds of frozen patties. Many of the nearly 40 people sickened since July were hospitalized, but all survived the potentially fatal illness.

 

Legislation proposed by US Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, would give the USDA the authority to issue recalls, in addition to requiring that producers carry recall insurance to cover the cost of handling a recall.

 

"The whole goal here is to protect people and jobs," Brown said.

 

In some ways, the USDA is fighting the last war, when sick and dying livestock were dragged to slaughter. That campaign began following the 1906 indictment of the meat industry in Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle," said Michael R. Taylor, who headed the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service in the Clinton administration.

 

The current inspection scheme is obsolete and wasteful, Taylor said. Much as they did 100 years ago, USDA inspectors check hundreds of millions beef and pork carcasses and some 8 billion chickens annually - devoting about 2 seconds to each bird, he said.

Such a system contributes little to food safety, the National Academy of Sciences concluded 20 years ago, he noted. Instead, the focus should be on checking for E. coli bacteria in beef, and other microscopic dangers in poultry, he said.

 

"The USDA has a 100-year mandate for carcass-by-carcass examination, which is simply not effective for identifying pathogens," said Taylor, now a professor at George Washington University. "We don't have much problem with diseased animals coming into slaughterhouses; we have trouble with microbes."

 

In Taylor's view, the USDA should still have inspectors at every meat and poultry plant, but they would be focused on sampling the product to develop a picture of microbial activity, while the FDA, which regulators other foods, would become more focused on preventing outbreaks.

 

Slaughterhouses are not required to test carcasses for pathogens, and if they do, they are not required to hold onto the meat until they get results, according to the American Meat Institute, a trade group. Many meatpackers test their finished product, such as frozen or raw hamburger, but that is not required, the AMI said.

 

The recent outbreaks reversed a steady decline of E. coli in ground beef that began in 2000, but the government and industry are not certain whether that signals a trend or was due to random events.

 

"We're trying to determine if this is a seasonal fluctuation," said Janet M. Riley, senior vice president of the American Meat Institute, whose 220 members operate some 5,500 meat processing and packing plants.

 

"Something happened this summer. It's different," Richard Raymond, USDA undersecretary for food safety, said last week. "We know that we can do better."

 

He pledged that the agency would move quicker to alert the public about contaminated meat. The USDA was criticized for not seeking a recall from Topps Meat Co. until 18 days after preliminary tests indicated that its frozen hamburger patties were contaminated with the E. coli bacteria strain O157:H7.

 

Topps eventually issued a recall September 25, and then expanded it September 29 to include all frozen patties it had made in the past year - 21.7 million pounds - the second-largest beef recall in US history. Much of the meat had already been eaten, however, and illness in at least 35 people in eight states has been linked to the Topps hamburgers.

 

Topps, of Elizabeth, New Jersey went out of business last Friday. Nearly 90 workers lost their jobs.

 

Later that day, the Sam's Club warehouse chain pulled a brand of ground beef patties from its shelves nationwide after four children in Minnesota developed E. coli illness from the hamburger, produced by Cargill Inc. at its plant in Butler, Wisconsin. Cargill recalled more than 840,000 pounds of frozen patties.

 

The USDA said the cases are not related, and that the source of the contamination has not yet been determined for either recall.

 

The O157:H7 strain of E. coli bacteria, which can be fatal to humans, is harboured in the intestines of cattle and can also get on their hides. Improper butchering and processing can cause the E. coli to get onto meat. Thorough cooking, to at least 160 degrees internal temperature, can destroy the bacteria.

 

Topps got beef parts from slaughterhouses, ground them, formed the meat into patties and froze them. The Cargill plant near Milwaukee is a similar operation.

 

Cargill, based in Wayzata, Minnesota, is one of the nation's largest privately held companies and makes food ingredients, moves commodities around the world and runs financial commodities trading businesses.

 

Privately held Topps, which claimed to be the leading US maker of frozen hamburger patties, sold its products to supermarkets and institutions such as schools, hospitals, restaurants and hotels.