WASHINGTON - Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman saidFriday the United States was years away from instituting a new, more scientific method of food testing but admitted it will not be foolproof as his department deals with the biggest meat recall in its history.
Meanwhile, Hudson Foods Inc. said its Columbus, Neb., plant, the source of 25 million pounds of potentially contaminated ground beef, would remain closed until it determines the source of the problem.
"It will be a couple of years before the system is fully in place and it will be a much more scientific system," he told NBC's "Today" show in an interview.
But Glickman said despite the recall, "hamburger meat is safe in this country."
In the past, he said, the department relied on a "sniffing, poking, seeing-type system." But he said the new testing procedures for detecting E.coli and other bacterial forms "still will not be absolutely foolproof no matter what we do because these are microscopic bugs, so to speak."
The Agriculture DepartmentThursday forced Hudson Foods to shut down its Columbus, Nebraska, plant and recall 25 million poundsof beef suspected of being tainted with the E. coli bacterium. It turned what began 10 days ago as a food safety problem into the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
Last week the department asked Hudson to call back some 1.2 million poundsof 4-ouncehamburger patties as a safety precaution. With the announcementThursday, the recall figure will jump to a total of some 25 million pounds of patties.
The strain of E. coli found in the recalled meat is a virulent one and has been blamed for at least 18 illnesses linked to Hudson meat as well as the deaths of dozens of people in the Pacific Northwest, Japan and Scotland in the past decade.
He was asked if any of the recalled meat could have made its way to any school districts as students prepare to start classes in coming weeks.
"We doubt it but we're checking and if that is in fact the case we are going to remove the product from the schools," he said.
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