AND - 1 MILLION POUNDS OF GROUND BEEF RECALLED(Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia)
Moms View Message Board: General Discussion: Archive November 2007:
AND - 1 MILLION POUNDS OF GROUND BEEF RECALLED(Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia)
Here's the story, from Marketwatch:
AN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. said Saturday that it is recalling more than one million pounds of ground beef which may be contaminated with a toxic form of E. coli bacteria.
The recall affects roughly 1,084,384 pounds of ground beef produced at Cargill's regional facility in Wyalusing, Penn., the company said in a statement on its Web site.
The recalled meat was produced at the plant between Oct. 8 and Oct. 11 and was distributed to retailers nationwide. Cargill learned of the possibility of contamination after the U.S. Department of Agriculture returned a confirmed positive test result on a sample produced Oct. 8, the company said. Read Cargill's recall announcement here. (link to Cargill recall announcement, listing brands/dates: Cargill
"No illnesses have been associated with this product," John Keating, president of Cargill Regional Beef, said in the statement. "We are working closely with the USDA to remove the product from the marketplace."
States impacted by the recall are Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia, the company said.
The recall includes ground beef packaged under the Century Farm, Giant, Eagle, Giant Eagle, Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, Weis and Price Rite labels.
As a side note, Nancy Nord, the acting head of the Consumer Product Safety Commission (which oversees food product safety, among other things) wrote to two senators to ask that they not approve legislation which would increase the CPSC's budget, increase its staff, increase penalties for safety violations, and allow the CPSC to publicly announce recalls. CPSC
I am sure there is a reason for this, but does anyone know why meat isn't tested BEFORE it leaves the plant and is distributed, bought and eaten? A sample from October 8th?? Why does it take so long?
Most of the various recent recalls are voluntary on the part of the individual companies, not the CPSC. I believe that Nancy Nord's point is that the government doesn't *need* to be involved in every aspect of the free market and the more involved the government becomes the larger the bureaucracy becomes and the less effective it becomes. There is no way to inspect each and every product or item that is sold on store shelves throughout the country. Government shouldn't use my money, IMO, to micromanage an entire industry.
Here is an excerpt from her letter to the senate.
from Foxbusiness.com
"I do not believe that there is a need for this level of penalty cap and that such a relatively high cap may have the undesired consequence of firms, as a precautionary measure, flooding the agency with virtually every consumer complaint and incident of any kind, regardless of any actual product safety issue, making it more likely that true safety issues will go unrecognized in the process," Nord wrote.
from LA Times
"My concern is that the legislation imposes a number of new requirements on the agency but it doesn't fund them," Nord said. "It doesn't increase our budget. All it does is give us permission to increase our budget."
From the same article in the LA Times:
"The bill, SB 2045, covers a lot of ground. It would boost the commission's budget from about $63 million to nearly $142 million by 2015 and increase its staff by 20%."
Ms. Nord is correct in that the bill does not appropriate the money; appropriations bills are always separate from bills that set the budgets for various government agencies. But the bill does indeed increase the CPSC's budget by a significant factor.
Ms. Nord is also receiving criticism because she and her predecessor have taken a number of trips that were paid for by the very businesses she is supposed to oversee and investigate.
Thank goodness I still have meat from the side of beef I bought. I feel so much better knowing who & where we get our meat.
I was aware of the rest of the LA Times article. However, trying to find Ms. Nord's side of the story anywhere in the mainstream media is next to impossible. If we are to be an open minded society, I thought it best to find out the other side before making a judgment.
But since all of the articles I found were totally biased against her and attacked her on behalf of the democrats, I found that very difficult. The letter that she sent to the senate was linked in a blog, but the link led to a 404 error. That was the best I could do.
SAM'S CLUB also, per MSNBC, labeled American Chef's Selection Angus Beef Patties. According to MSNBC "Each package bears a case code of 7703100 and "Best If Used By" dates of Feb. 5, 6, 12 and 13, 2008."
And, according to MSNBC, it is not the Consumer Products Safety Commission that is responsible for overseeing this kind of food product, but rather the Dept. of Agriculture. According to MSNBC: "Cargill learned of the issue Friday, when a compliance officer from the federal Agriculture Department visited the company's ground beef facility in Butler, Wis., Klein said. Officials had traced the patties to that plant."
This appears to be a different e-coli hazard than the first one I listed, because the beef in the first notice was packaged in Wyalusing, Pennsylvania.
This is why I just can't eat a hamburger anymore. I love my meat mooing - but I won't eat it if I can't be "sure" it's safe.
Used to eat steak tar-tar when I could ... oh well.
Luckily, the supermarket I use grinds their own sirloin daily so it's not included in this recall.
Ame
|
Members
