- Hello Jeff - It seems as though our officials are trying
to see who can make the MOST asinine statement with regard to the travesty
of the beef supply. Let's see who is the dimmest wit on the block...
-
- An Unnamed Federal Official USDA:
-
- "Cattle weakened by disease are not supposed to
enter the food supply, although their risk of harming humans is still fairly
low."
-
- This next statement by James O. Reagan, Chairman, Beef
Industry Food Safety Council, gets my vote for MOST asinine statement:
-
- "James O. Reagan, chairman of the Beef Industry
Food Safety Council, issued a statement saying he supported the recall.
'At the same time,' he was quoted as saying, 'we can say with confidence
that the beef supply is safe.' He said there were 'multiple interlocking
safeguards' in every beef processing plant so that a single lapse would
not endanger consumers."
-
- Next up, Ken Petersen, USDA Food Safety and Inspection
Service:
-
-
- "We don't know exactly where all the product went"
but will "cast a wide net to make sure that we can find all the product
that we can find."
-
- Unnamed Agriculture Officials:
-
-
- " Agriculture officials said in a statement
that they thought the case was "an isolated incident of egregious
violations to humane handling requirements and the prohibition of non-ambulatory
disabled cattle from entering the food supply."
-
-
- No matter how you "slice" it, our meat supply
is NOT safe. USDA/Food Safety and Inspection Service is not doing its
job. How many more meat packing/slaughter operations are doing the same
thing? I do not think this is an isolated case.
-
- Over the past two years, there were many many E-Coli/ground
beef recalls.
-
- "Beef - it does NOT do a body good!" A very
sad note on this case is the fact that the beef went to the nation's school
lunch program. I personally believe that meat should not be part of the
lunch program. There are many nutritious and tasty vegan and non-meat
dishes that would be much better for the children than beef and other meats.
Eliminating meat from school lunches might also help fight childhood obesity.
-
- Patty
-
-
-
- Huge US Beef Recall Issued
- 18.feb.08
- Los Angeles Times/New York Times/USA Today
-
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the largest
beef recall in its history Sunday, calling for, according to these stories,
the destruction of 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef produced by
a Chino slaughterhouse that has been accused of inhumane practices.
- However, the USDA said the vast majority of the meat
involved in the recall -- including 37 million pounds that went mostly
to schools -- probably has been eaten already. Officials emphasized that
danger to consumers was minimal.
-
- The recall applies to beef slaughtered at the Hallmark/Westland
Meat Packing Co. since Feb. 1, 2006. The company has produced no meat since
Feb. 4 of this year, when operations were suspended.
-
- The action came nearly three weeks after the Humane Society
of the United States released a video showing workers at the plant using
forklifts and water hoses, among other methods, to rouse cattle too weak
to walk. In addition to issues of animal cruelty, the video raised questions
about whether so-called downer cattle were entering the food chain in violation
of federal regulations.
-
- Although the Humane Society said at least four non-ambulatory
cattle had been slaughtered for food, the USDA had repeatedly said it had
no such evidence. On Sunday, federal officials said for the first time
that they had evidence such cattle from Hallmark had been processed for
food.
-
- Downer cattle are not supposed to be used as meat unless
a veterinarian determines that the animal stumbled or fell because of injury
-- a broken leg, for instance -- that would not affect the safety of their
meat. Cattle weakened by disease are not supposed to enter the food supply,
although their risk of harming humans is still fairly low. There is, however,
a slightly higher possibility that such cattle are suffering from bovine
spongiform encephalopathy, better known as mad cow disease.
-
- Steve Mendell, president of Hallmark Meat Packing and
its distributor, Westland, declined to comment. The company has refused
to answer questions about its practices since the Humane Society video
surfaced.
- The stories go on to say that Hallmark/Westland meat
was also sold to restaurant chains, including In-N-Out Burger and Jack
in the Box, but both of those companies said they stopped using it early
this month after the first reports of problems at the plant.
-
- The amount of beef affected by the recall may be far
larger than 143 million pounds because meat from different companies is
often mixed as it goes through numerous processors. Such mixing makes it
extremely difficult for consumers to know whether meat products came from
a particular plant.
-
- At a USDA telephone briefing Sunday for retailers, school
districts and food safety experts, a Costco representative raised concerns
about beef that gets "commingled," according to Humane Society
President Wayne Pacelle, who participated in the conference call. He said
the Costco representative estimated that the amount of beef recalled may
top a billion pounds.
- Four senior Democrats in Congress, including Assistant
Senate Majority Leader Dick Durbin, told the General Accounting Office
on Thursday to investigate the safety of meat in the school lunch program
in light of the Hallmark/Westland case.
-
- The video was embarrassing for the Department of Agriculture,
as inspectors are supposed to be monitoring slaughterhouses for abuse.
It surfaced after a year of increasing concerns about the safety of the
meat supply amid a sharp increase in the number of recalls tied to a particularly
deadly form of the E. coli pathogen.
-
- Cows that cannot walk are banned for use in the food
supply because they pose an added risk of mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform
encephalopathy, a fatal disease that eats away at the brain. There have
been three confirmed cases of infected cattle in this country since 2003.
- One consumer advocate questioned whether the likelihood
of danger from the recalled meat was as low as the USDA contended.
-
- Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director for the Center
for Science in the Public Interest, a Washington-based consumer advocacy
and research organization, was cited as saying federal regulators "really
don't know what conditions were making the cattle sick."
-
- James O. Reagan, chairman of the Beef Industry Food Safety
Council, issued a statement saying he supported the recall. "At the
same time," he was quoted as saying, "we can say with confidence
that the beef supply is safe." He said there were "multiple interlocking
safeguards" in every beef processing plant so that a single lapse
would not endanger consumers.
-
- "We don't know exactly where all the product went"
but will "cast a wide net to make sure that we can find all the product
that we can find," Ken Petersen at the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection
Service was cited as saying in a conference call with reporters Sunday.
-
- "The recall is obviously the big news," Wayne
Pacelle, president and chief executive of the Humane Society was quoted
as saying, adding, "The longer-term problem is the inadequacies of
the inspection system. How can so many downers have been mistreated day
after day within a U.S.D.A. oversight system that was present at the plant?
-
- "We need more boots on the ground at the plants,"
he was quoted as saying.
-
-
- Agriculture officials said in a statement that they thought
the case was "an isolated incident of egregious violations to humane
handling requirements and the prohibition of non-ambulatory disabled cattle
from entering the food supply."
-
-
- Patricia A. Doyle DVM, PhD
- Bus Admin, Tropical Agricultural Economics
- Univ of West Indies
-
- Please visit my "Emerging Diseases" message
board at:
- http://www.emergingdisease.org/phpbb/index.php
- Also my new website:
- http://drpdoyle.tripod.com/
- Zhan le Devlesa tai sastimasa
- Go with God and in Good Health
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