Not that we eat much of the freeze-dried faux meat involved in the recall, but as a signifying event, pretty disquieting. What percentage of the executives of the FDA are former food industry executives? How many plan on working for the food industry after their tenure at the FDA? Too many, I'm sure.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture waited 18 days after learning that millions of pounds of ground beef made by Topps Meat Co. could be contaminated with E coli bacteria before it concluded that a recall was necessary, an e-mail from an agency inspection official shows. The Topps hamburger recall, which is now the third largest hamburger recall in USDA history, was first announced Sept. 25. The Elizabeth, N.J., company initially recalled 331,000 pounds of hamburger, but last Saturday expanded the recall to include 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger.
[From USDA took 18 days to recall bad meat -- chicagotribune.com]
Thanks Red State voters, your support of deregulating Republicans has really helped matters.
Yet at the USDA, tests confirmed the presence of the E coli bacteria strain O157:H7 in the Topps hamburgers on Sept. 7, according to an e-mail from Kis Robertson, an employee of the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS).
Robertson, who declined comment, sent the e-mail to Scott Schlesinger, an attorney for Samantha Safranek, a Florida teenager who fell ill in August after eating a Topps hamburger.
Robertson's e-mail states: "The patties taken from the Safraneks were confirmed positive for E coli O157:H7 by FSIS on 9/07/07. The leftover product samples are still at Eastern Laboratory in Athens, GA. The decision to release these has to come from Agency leadership and I don't know what has been decided."
Safranek and her parents, Anna and David, sued Wal-Mart Stores Inc., where they bought the three-pound box of frozen Topps hamburger patties. In Newark, a lawyer representing four people who said they ate the Topps meat filed a class action lawsuit on Wednesday seeking unspecified monetary compensation for anyone who bought or was sickened by the Topps hamburgers and sold by Wal-Mart., Pathmark Stores Inc., ShopRite and Rastelli Fine Foods.
The USDA also announced its recall only as New York state published its own Sept. 25 consumer alert regarding possible E coli contamination in Topps hamburger. Claudia Hutton, a spokeswoman for the New York Department of Health, said that state investigators confirmed the E coli in Topps beef on Sept. 24 during tests in its Wadsworth Center Laboratories.
