Beef Recall Due to Salmonella

From CNN:

Beef Packers Inc., based in Fresno, California, recalled 22,723 pounds of ground beef products produced on September 23, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service said in a statement. The labels on the beef include the establishment number "EST. 31913," the agency said.

The beef was repackaged at a distribution plant in Arizona, then sold under different retail brand names, the agency said. The agency's statement did not identify brand names.

Right. We wouldn't want to reveal brand names because that might hurt business. If only consumers had a government agency to look out for them the way corporations do.

The products were sold in Arizona and New Mexico, said Mark Klein, spokesman for Cargill Inc., which owns Beef Packers, Inc. Consumers in those states should check with stores where they purchased meat to determine if they bought the recalled beef.

Good old Cargill.

Tips for Avoiding Factory Farm Products

A guide to shopping and eating for those who wish to avoid supporting factory farms:

Most people share at least the following traits: they want to be healthy; they like animals; and they value clean air and water. Yet relatively few Americans connect those concerns with their food. As more people start making the link (especially if they've seen graphic video footage of industrial animal operations), many decide it's time to stop eating foods from factory farms. This is a guide for doing just that.

Among the author's recommendations:

• Eat less meat. Eat better meat. (The same goes for dairy products and eggs).
• Know your labels (and their shortcomings).
• Explore alternative stores (independent grocery stores and co-ops).
• Pasture is the gold standard.
• Grass fed is very good (but the label is weak).
• Organic is very good, (but the label isn't perfect).
• Free range is okay (but the label is seriously flawed).
• Antibiotic free doesn't mean much.

Another Huge Ground Beef Recall

CBS News reports that dozens of illnesses and 2 deaths may be linked to the latest recall of half a million pounds of ground beef:

Ashville, N.Y.-based Fairbank Farms recalled almost 546,000 pounds of fresh ground beef that may be tainted with E. coli bacteria. The meat was distributed in September to stores from Virginia to Maine.

The ground beef was sold at Trader Joe's, Price Chopper, Lancaster, Wild Harvest, Shaw's, BJ's, Ford Brothers and Giant stores. Each package carried the number "EST. 492" on the label. They were packaged Sept. 15-16 and may have been labeled with a sell-by date from Sept. 19 through Sept. 28.

Also, ground beef packaged under the Fairbank Farms name was distributed to stores in Maryland, Massachusetts, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania and Virginia. That meat was likely repackaged for sale and would likely have differing package and sell-by dates.

So basically, good luck figuring out where the meat you bought came from. Business as usual.

I Wonder When the US Will Take Food Safety Seriously

NYT article on e. coli and ground beef exposes lots of repulsive practices in the meat industry but of particular interest to me was the info on page 2. The NYT tried to get details on Cargill's grinding practices via a Freedom of Information Act request but the USDA redacted info from those docs to protect Cargill. The Times eventually got the unredacted docs from other sources. If our tax dollars are being used to fund agencies who look out for the interests of corporations, who is protecting consumers?

Another noteworthy bit: Cargill is careful about inspecting meat for metal pieces because nails and metal hooks might damage their grinders. But checking for e. coli before putting meat through the grinders - meh. When the bacteria is discovered later in the process, Cargill can honestly say they don't know the source because they buy from multiple slaughterhouses (and countries) and don't test before grinding everything together. If you happen to become gravely ill from a Cargill product, as Ms. Smith (the woman in this story) did, well - sucks being you.

The U.S.D.A. found that Cargill had not followed its own safety program for controlling E. coli. For example, Cargill was supposed to obtain a certificate from each supplier showing that their tests had found no E. coli. But Cargill did not have a certificate for the Uruguayan trimmings used on the day it made the burgers that sickened Ms. Smith and others.

After four months of negotiations, Cargill agreed to increase its scrutiny of suppliers and their testing, including audits and periodic checks to determine the accuracy of their laboratories.

It took 4 months of negotiations to get Cargill to agree to "increase its scrutiny of suppliers" of their incoming meat but they still won't test it. Meanwhile, Ms. Smith fights to stay alive:

Her kidneys are at high risk of failure. She is struggling to regain some basic life skills and deal with the anger that sometimes envelops her. Despite her determination, doctors say, she will most likely never walk again.

FDA Seizes Organic Herbs and Spices from Filthy Warehouse

NPI Center reports:

U.S. Marshals seized millions of dollars worth of ingredients on May 7 2009 from American Mercantile Corporation, based in Memphis Tennessee. During an inspection of the company in March, FDA investigators discovered evidence of extensive rodent and insect infestation throughout the company's warehouse, which the company failed to correct.

American Mercantile stores and processes food ingredients, which are sold or used in the dietary supplements, food, tea and pet food manufacturing industries.
[...]
American Mercantile apparently also has links to pet and equine foods. According to a story on herbs4horses.com, American Mercantile is a parent company of Herbs for Horses, an herbal product company for the equine and pet market. American Mercantile's ability to source ingredients for equine and pet foods is what attracted Don Silver, Manager of Equine Science to sell his company to American Mercantile in 2006.
[...]
No one at Ingredients Corporation of America or Herbs for Horses was available for comment at the time of publication, but the ownership affiliation between these two companies and American Mercantile gives rise to the question about whether contaminated ingredients are in finished foods and pet products.

Based upon past recalls involving the contaminant melamine and the recent contaminated peanut product recall, we know that some ingredients are spread throughout the human and pet food market in a large scale manner. While we don't know yet how widespread the use of these seized ingredients may be, I think it's probably worth following the story to see what develops.

With Apologies to Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Oh Peanut Butter Product Recall, how do I consider thee similar to the 2007 Pet Food Recall? Let me count the ways:

1. We now know that such diverse brands as Little Debbie, Keebler, Nutri System and Kashi all use the same ingredients (at least as far as peanut butter goes, maybe more). But wait a minute here - I thought if I paid more, I was getting a higher quality product? *sounds buzzer* Sorry, thanks for playing.

2. You can check a product’s website one day and it has an announcement reassuring consumers that their foods are safe. But the next day: recall! Are we supposed to believe the company didn’t know they were using the contaminated peanut butter from the mildew plant yesterday? Come on!

3. If you ask a company why only certain lots are being recalled (when presumably the other lots contain the same ingredients, at least they say so on the label) and if they’ve switched peanut butter vendors, they can’t give out specifics - it’s "proprietary info".

4. Non-PB products that were processed on the same equipment as the recalled products now have to be recalled due to cross-contamination because apparently they don’t clean the lines between runs!

5. The Salmonella/Mildew peanut processing plant “lab shopped” until it got the “right” results on its food safety tests. Those records only have to be made available to the FDA after people start dying from their greedy scheme.

Gee, PB recall and 2007 Pet Food Recall - you guys are like twins. Let's hope there isn't a triplet happening out there right now which we will only be made aware of after people start dying.



Related:

• Science Friday discussed the sad state of affairs at the FDA as part of the show today.
• Owner who fed his dog PB crackers and then the dog died
• FDA does basically nada about Salmonella tainted pet food

Owner Suspects Tainted Peanut Butter Killed Dog

In addition to the human death toll in the current peanut butter recall, a dog owner in Atlanta who shares his food with his pets believes there may be a link between the Salmonella tainted peanut butter and his dog's sudden death:

Bert Kanist says his dog Ozzie became sick after eating two packages of Austin brand peanut butter crackers, two days before the snacks were recalled because of the salmonella outbreak.

Ozzie died the next day.

Naturally the owner has questions but in typical secretive corporate fashion, the companies involved with the product are not terribly interested in helping:

"All I get is the same runaround. 'We can't talk to you. We'll take your name number,' and they pass me another phone number," he complained. "All I want is a straight answer from somebody."

Word. 

Peanut Butter Products Recalled

In case you haven't heard, it seems like a long list of processed foods containing peanut butter as an ingredient (crackers, ice cream, dog treats, etc.) are being recalled due to Salmonella contamination. From the FDA:

Peanut Corporation of America (PCA), is expanding the recall of peanut butter and voluntarily recalling peanut paste made at its Blakely, Georgia facility because the products have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella.
[...]
The recalled peanut butter and peanut paste were distributed to institutions, food service industries, and private label food companies in 24 states, the province of Saskatchewan in Canada, Korea and Haiti. The U.S. states are the following: Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia. In addition, affected product was used as an ingredient in other products that may have been distributed in other states.

None of the peanut butter being recalled is sold directly to consumers through retail stores by PCA.

PCA is not the only peanut butter manufacturer involved in this recall so you might like to take a look at all the recent FDA alerts. For now, they are saying that regular peanut butter on your grocery store shelf is not affected. As someone who eats a lot of peanut butter, I hope they are telling us the whole story.

Toxic Teddy Treats

Nothing says I Love You like a sweet teddy bear stuffy holding some delicious chocolate. Unless that's [insert scary music here] MELA-CHOCOLATE! From the FDA:

Walgreens is recalling 173 teddy bears with chocolate bars sold in stores since late September 2008. Analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration found that certain samples of the chocolate provided with the teddy bears were contaminated with melamine.

I guess those samples must have contained more melamine than the FDA (now) says it's A-OK for us to eat. Gee, if only some way, somehow, the FDA could have had some kind of heads up on this whole melamine issue before it hit our food supply.

Thanks for the stuffed bear but as for the chocolate, make mine Labrador please.

FDA Blocks Chinese Milk Products

Finally, some action from the FDA regarding the Chinese mela-milk scandal:

The agency, in an alert posted Wednesday on its Web site, ordered the "detention without physical examination of all milk products, milk-derived ingredients and finished food products containing milk from China due to the presence of melamine and/or melamine analogs."

The agency listed dozens of products, including cereals, snack foods, cheese, ice cream, carbonated drinks, candy, puddings and pet foods as potentially contaminated with melamine, which is used in the manufacture of plastics and fertilizer.

I wonder how many people and pets have been consuming melamine tainted foods while the FDA dragged its heels. I also wonder if the practice of increasing profits by poisoning foods is isolated to the Chinese and melamine. Seems unlikely to me but since the FDA only conducts food safety testing on a tiny fraction of imports, I guess we won't find out until some other large group of people and/or pets get sick/die from eating toxic "food".

How Much Melamine is Too Much?

The Washington Post reports that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has decided that melamine is ok in foods in very small amounts:

American consumers first learned of the dangers of melamine when it was found last year in pet food ingredients made in China. The Chinese suppliers of the bulk ingredients had been adding the melamine, officials determined, to boost the apparent protein levels in product testing.

At that time of course, the FDA said that melamine did not belong in foods and any food found to contain melamine was considered adulterated. Now:

The FDA set 2.5 parts per million as the maximum "tolerable" amount of melamine that could be safely consumed in other foods [besides baby formula, which is the exception to the new FDA rule]. [bracketed addition=mine]

Hmm, call me unconvinced as to the safety of daily melamine consumption - in any amount. Some consumers in Thailand seem equally suspicious and question their FDA's handling of the melamine situation:

Public Health Minister Chalerm Yubamrung did little to convince consumers otherwise when, seeking to downplay the milk scandal last Wednesday, he spoke more on the health of trade relations, than of, well, health.

[...]

Minister Chalerm's position was echoed by FDA deputy secretarty-general Narangsan Peerakit, who then evaded further questions from reporters, saying that "the minister's policy is that news reports should not have a negative impact on Chinese products".

That has a familiar ring to it! Those FDAs must share the same playbook.


A newspaper in Taiwan noted that the new US FDA rule on melamine allows significantly higher amounts of the toxin than last year's ruling which came after it was discovered that some feed animals had been fed melamine tainted pet food:

In the case of the US, the FDA said on Friday on its Web site that “in food products other than infant formula, the FDA concludes that levels of melamine and melamine-related compounds below 2.5 parts per million do not raise concerns.”

But Hsieh Yen-yao, vice superintendent of the Koo Foundation Sun Yet-Sen Cancer Center, said the US FDA had set a level of 0.05ppm for pork, chicken, fish and eggs.

That restriction is stated in the FDA’s risk assessment from last May.

Again, hmm. Perhaps the FDA document being referred to is this one but in any case, there appears to be some disagreement over "safe levels" of melamine in foods. Fluid risk assessment to fit current circumstances? I don't know but I tend to agree with Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (D - CT), chair of the FDA Appropriations Subcommittee:

While other countries throughout the world, including the European Union, are acting to ban melamine-contaminated products from China, the FDA has chosen to establish an acceptable level for melamine in food in an attempt to convince consumers that it is not harmful. Not only is this is an insult to consumers, but it would appear that the FDA is condoning the intentional contamination of foods.

I hope Rep. DeLauro and her subcommittee fund the FDA to advance food safety inspections, especially on imports which have proven to be very risky. Domestically, the Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank is currently shutting down due to lack of funding. The program tested meat, eggs and dairy products for environmental contaminants, pesticides and drugs.