WASHINGTON - Some fast-food restaurants ran out of hamburgers Friday after the U.S. government forced the biggest U.S. meat recall in history and a "SWAT team" searched for the source of deadly E.coli contamination.
U.S. Agriculture Department officials would not rule out taking further action once they find the source of the tainted beef, one day after the government forced Hudson Foods Inc to close a Nebraska plant and recall a record 25 million pounds of frozen hamburger patties.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said a "SWAT team" of investigators would continue combing through records and paperwork to determine which of six slaughterhouses supplied the bad beef to Hudson. Neither the USDA nor Hudson would identify the six firms, which together operate 10 plants, saying it would be unfair to name names until the investigation is completed.
"Once we've identified the slaughterhouse we will go back there to make sure their sanitation plans are in order and are being carried out," said Jacque Knight, a spokeswoman for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. "We've had no further reports of any suspected outbreaks of illness."
Some Burger King Corp. restaurants posted hand-written signs saying the menu was temporarily limited to chicken or fish sandwiches because of the massive recall. The Miami-based company asked for "patience and loyalty" from customers because one-fourth of its restaurants were affected by the recall.
"We are the only national fast-food company with a calibrated conveyor flame broiler system that guarantees that all beef is cooked to a minimum of 155 degrees F, thereby ensuring the safety of our customers," said Paul Clayton, Burger King president.
Wal-Mart Stores, Safeway Inc and other grocery stores also pulled Hudson frozen hamburger patties from the shelves.
Executives with Arkansas-based Hudson have blamed the contamination on outside suppliers, and said they were cooperating with the investigation. The shutdown of the plant will cost Hudson, which had company-wide sales of about $1.4 billion last year, about $2 million a week in lost sales.
E.coli from animal feces can contaminate meat and other foods, causing diarrhea, dehydration and even kidney failure. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 10,000 to 20,000 Americans become infected with E.coli each year and 10 to 20% of those cases are linked to hamburger.
A virulent strain of the bacteria, E.coli:0157, was blamed for more than two dozen deaths in Japan and Scotland late last year.
Food safety experts said the bacteria is destroyed by thorough cooking, and using a thermometer to make sure that the middle of cooked meat has reached 160 degrees Fahrenheit.
"I would not hesitate to go to Burger King any day to eat a hamburger," said Daniel Fung, professor of food science at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas.
Fung and other industry experts contend that the U.S. meat supply is the safest in the world, although he called for more testing in the food industry for micro-organisms.
Hudson's state-of-the-art plant in Columbus, Nebraska, was closed indefinitely Thursday after investigators learned that the company had improperly mixed leftover hamburger from the previous day into new batches of hamburger patties.
The recall was seized upon by consumer groups as evidence that tougher rules are needed to protect the food supply. But meat industry experts said the USDA already had the power to impound potentially contaminated food if a company refused to go along with a USDA request for a recall.
The Clinton administration said it would press for new legislation next month that would give the agency the authority to summarily close a food plant and order a recall, instead of having to ask a company to do so.
The fact that only 18 people became sick -- and none died -- from eating the contaminated meat showed that the existing food safey system works reasonably well, Glickman said.
"It is not a perfect system and there are people who will get sick no matter what we do," Glickman said. In 1994, a similar outbreak of E.coli bacteria in hamburgers sold by the Jack In The Box chain made 700 people sick in the Northwest, and caused four deaths.
"Because of our improvements over the last three years, we're doing a much better job of finding the contamination and protecting the public from it," Glickman added.
Since January, U.S. slaughterhouses have been required to test for generic E.coli on every 300 carcasses handled.
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