A New York Times report on ground beef E. coli outbreak dangers associated with industrial level hamburger grinding is still gaining attention around the country, including on the floor of the U.S. House and the office of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack said the Times report by Michael Moss, which focused on a 2007 E. coli O157:H7 outbreak linked to Cargill hamburger patties, is boosting his department’s effort to fight E. coli.
Especially in children, cancer patients and older adults, the pathogen can lead to hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS), an attack on red blood cells that can result in kidney failure, heart problems, strokes, brain damage and spinal cord injury. One of the victims of the Cargill ground beef E. coli outbreak was a young dance instructor who suffered paralysis after contracting E. coli HUS.
E. coli O157:H7 was banned from ground beef in 1994, but grinding plants aren’t required to test incoming beef trim and scrap that is used to make ground beef. In fact, as the Times story showed, some big slaughterhouses won’t sell meat to grinders if the plants test the shipments for E. coli. That’s because a positive result would likely mandate a multi-customer recall of the supplier’s meat.
U.S. Representative Louise M. Slaughter, D- New York, and chairwoman of the Rules Committee, read parts of The New York Times article on the House floor this week and said the lingering pathogens in meat and the industry’s use of antibiotics were threatening to harm exports of beef to Europe. Rep. Slaughter is a microbiologist.
“We’ve got to get people to understand what’s going on here,” she said.
One of the big moments in the story was Costco’s food safety director saying industry giant Tyson wouldn’t sell beef trim to Costco’s grinding operation because Costco’s policy is to test incoming shipments. Tyson did not respond to the statement directly.
A follow-up story in the Times said Costco has reached an agreement with Tyson that allows Costco to test the trimmings before they are mixed with those from other suppliers.
The food safety officer at American Foodservice, which grinds 365 million pounds of hamburger a year, said it stopped testing trimmings a decade ago because of resistance from slaughterhouses. “They would not sell to us,” said Timothy P. Biela, the officer. “If I test and it’s positive, I put them in a regulatory situation. So we don’t do that.”
Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), told the Times that his agency could mandate testing, but that it needed to consider the impact on companies as well as consumers.
“I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health,” Dr. Petersen said.
In damage-control mode after Peterson’s comment was aired in the Times story, Vilsack said in his prepared statement that public health and food safety was USDA’s priority. But he didn’t address whether USDA would consider mandating E. coli tests of ingredients that arrive at grinding plants.
The Times story was an important national story because it showed that eating ground beef is still a gamble. There have been 16 ground beef E. coli outbreaks in the past three years. In the Cargill E. coli hamburger outbreak of 2007, the company recalled 845,000 pounds of ground beef produced at its plant in Butler, Wisconsin, after people began to fall ill.
The “Angus Beef Patties” found to be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 were really made with cheap, fatty beef trim, scrap and other cheap beef ingredients that came from multiple slaughterhouses, one as far away as Uruguay. The Times story went back and traced where the ingredients came from, noting that Cargill used beef parts most likely to come in contact with E. coli during the slaughter process.
Click here to see the original Times story.
