080203 Beef in Massive Recall Proves Tough to Trace

The meat being swept up in the nation's biggest beef recall probably won't kill you or even make you sick – which is a good thing since there's no quick, easy way to tell if any of it is in your kitchen.

"There would be no way you would know if it's an ingredient" in a canned pasta sauce or a frozen dinner, said Linda Harris, a UC Davis food microbiologist.

The mystery that lingers over the recalled meat is reigniting debate over how America's food supply is monitored, whether recall powers should be strengthened, and if public alerts are broad enough.

It might also set the stage for use of a new California law that requires wholesalers of meat that is later recalled to give state health officials a full list of their customers.

"This is the first time that the California recall law is being tested," said Consumers Union spokeswoman Elisa Odibashian. The group had lobbied heavily for SB 611, which went into effect last year.

The California Department of Public Health is "working closely with the USDA and others to obtain distribution information," department spokeswoman Suanne Buggy said Tuesday evening.

While the U.S. Department of Agriculture has posted on its Web site a list of about 70 products that a Southern California slaughterhouse sold to wholesalers, it did not immediately respond to inquiries about who bought the beef or what they used it for.

Neither did Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., which is recalling two years' worth of beef production – 143 million pounds – after USDA officials declared it unfit for human consumption.

Westland/Hallmark killed and processed some cows that weren't able to walk to their deaths on their own, the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service said Sunday. That violates a federal rule unless a vet specifically approves, because falling can be a sign of mad cow disease or other health problems.

More than 37 million pounds of Westland/Hallmark meat went to school lunch or other nutrition programs, although so far no full list of affected schools is available. Other customers have included Jack in the Box and In-N-Out Burger.

In addition, millions more pounds of meat from other sources may have been "co-mingled" with the slaughterhouse's beef as food processors made tacos, meatballs and other products.

"It's going to be nearly impossible to be absolutely certain that we can trace down every ounce of meat that left Westland," said Michael Markarian, an executive vice president of the Humane Society of the United States.

"This is a lower grade type of beef," he said of the cows handled by Westland. "We're not talking about cattle raised for beef. These are spent dairy cows. They're called spent by the industry because their milk productivity has waned. They're older, they might be more frail" and their meat is likely to be combined with other ground beef into a wide range of products.

A Humane Society undercover video, which showed cows being shoved with forklifts and pulled by chains in an effort to move them toward slaughter, triggered the recall, along with charges of animal cruelty against former plant workers.

The plant practices were cast by federal officials and others as posing little risk to the food supply, because there are many other safeguards against bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

"The risk is low," UC Davis' Harris said. "It's not something I'm going to lose sleep about."

Still, the Humane Society undercover video raises troubling questions about the role of company officials and federal inspectors onsite, she and others said.

"Why or how was this missed?" Harris asked. "Those are the very questions that consumers need to ask."

U.S. Rep Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who plans to hold hearings on the recall, said the episode underscores her concerns that the USDA cannot fulfill dual roles of promoting agriculture and policing food safety.

"This took an outside group, the Humane Society, to unveil the terrible practices," DeLauro said at a Tuesday press conference.

Meanwhile, schools in the Sacramento region and around the nation continued to grapple with the recall, which hit cafeterias earlier this month when they were warned to hold off on using beef from the south state producer.

Jack O'Connell, state superintendent of public instruction, said Tuesday he would send information to California school districts about destroying recalled ground beef and seeking reimbursement from the National School Lunch Program.

The Elk Grove Unified School District has pulled all ground beef products from school meals. Elk Grove has 1,500 cases on hold, including several types of finished ground beef products such as patties, meatloaf and meatballs, said Elizabeth Graswich, director of communications.

As talk of new regulations continued to swirl in Washington, the American Association of Meat Processors, an industry group representing 1,400 meat processors, stressed that such treatment of cows is atypical and is "an animal handling issue, not a food safety issue," said spokesman Jay Wenther.

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