USDA starts to really test for E. coli in beef
Rather than just taking the word of the meatpackers, USDA may start doing its job. From Obama Foodorama:
Newly appointed deputy secretary for food safety at USDA Jerold Mande, who snuck into his position without much fanfare, has just announced that Fed inspectors will be searching for E coli in bench trim, a kind of whole beef cut that has routinely been left out of inspections. This seems to be in direct response to the massive Class 1 (you could die) recall of products from JBS Swift meat company. The 421,000 pounds of beef, produced in a single day, were found to be contaminated with E coli 0157:H7, which generally shows up in ground beef, rather than in beef cuts; somehow Swift managed to get contamination into their primal cuts. The voluntary recall, unfortunately, was plagued with a disturbing slowness on the part of the Food Safety and Inspection Service to publicize the names of retail outlets that had received contamo meat.
*Audio of the announcement, featuring Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, Jerold Mande, and new FSWG honcho Michael Taylor is here. Taylor’s comments about food safety and farms is…curious.
