Ground Beef Recall Expanded

[Charlie]

Perhaps of interest, given the recent discussions about the beef industry and the fact that some of ya may be getting one of these toxic gut bombs from somewhere. Just happened to be on the MSM news too.

Nearly 22 MILLION lbs of possibly E.coli contaminated dead cow. WOW!

Homegrown/locally grown is looking better all the time, eh? So are beans and rice! With the sometimes crawdad thrown in.

I love this line.......

"We sincerely regret any inconvenience and concerns this may cause our consumers," Livermore said. (Like your death)

Charlie......who apologizes if this shows more than once.....had a glitch-thingie in the posting-thingie........or something. It kept refusing to show. Hmmmm......black helicopters and all......I kept cutting things from the post commentaries.

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Beef Recall Expanded Across U.S.

By TOM HESTER Jr. Associated Press Writer

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) -- The Topps Meat Co. on Saturday expanded its recall of frozen hamburger patties to include 21.7 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria that sickened more than a dozen people in eight states.

The recall of products distributed to retail grocery stores and food service institutions in the United States was a drastic increase from the 332,000 pounds recalled Tuesday.

The recall represents all Topps products with either a "sell by date" or a "best if used by date" between Sept. 25 this year and Sept. 25,

2008. The Elizabeth-based company said this information is found on a package's back panel.

All recalled products also have a USDA establishment number of EST

9748, which is located on the back panel of the package and-or in the USDA legend, the company said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Friday it had suspended the grinding of raw products at the Topps plant after inspectors found inadequate safety measures at the Topps plant. The USDA declined to detail the inadequate safety measures.

"Because the health and safety of our consumers is our top priority, we are taking these expansive measures," said Geoffrey Livermore, Topps' operations vice president.

He said Topps has augmented its procedures with microbiologists and food safety experts.

"We sincerely regret any inconvenience and concerns this may cause our consumers," Livermore said.

The USDA said three people are confirmed as getting E. Coli from Topps products, with 22 other cases under investigation. Cases were found in Connecticut, Florida, Indiana, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

E. coli causes intestinal illness that generally clears up within a week for adults but can be deadly for the very young, the elderly and people with compromised immune systems. Symptoms can include severe stomach cramps, bloody diarrhea and, in extreme cases, kidney failure.

A full list of the recalled products is available at

.

2007 The Associated Press.

[General Schvantzkoph]

You want to raise your own cattle? I hope you have a big back yard.

Meat is going to have bacteria on it. Cattle have e-coli in their guts, just like you do, so when you slaughter them that bacteria is going to end up on the meat. In the case of hamburger it's going to get mixed in when you grind it. The only way to eliminate it is to cook it or irradiate it. This isn't new news, it's the reason that we've been cooking our food for the last million years or so.

[Jangchub]

Did you ever drive by a slaughter pen? The ground is soaked with urine and feces and the cattle lay in that, stand in it and wait to have their throats slashed and bled to death. The meat industry is dusgusting and vile. So, I did the best possible thing; I don't eat any meat at all. No fish, fish is meat. We don't need meat of any kind.

[dr-solo]

all animals got e.coli in their gut, including humans. meat should not have e.coli on the surface unless the meat packing plant has poor sanitary practices.

poisoning comes in when the meat contaminated on the outside is ground so that the bacteria now is evenly distributed thru out the ground meat. all meat has bacteria ground into it, it just happens that this kind of e.coli is a strain that is very toxic and infection requires a very small number of the toxic strain. normally our own e.coli prevents infection by other e.coli.

Ingrid

[Omelet]

Only if you don't know what the hell you are doing.

When I've processed meat, I _never_ get feces from the intestinal tract on the clean meat!

Ew.

[Omelet]

How are your vitamin B-12 levels?

[Ann]

Omelet expounded:

Cattle in feedlots spend their days up to their hocks in manure. It's on their skin when they go to slaughter. Proper sanitation should take care of it- then again, not even going the feedlot route would fix it forever.

[General Schvantzkoph]

Know what your doing? Slaughter house workers are illiterate third world immigrants, they were when Upton Sinclair wrote the Jungle and they are now, and they always will be. They process millions of cattle a year under the most oppressive conditions, contamination is inevitable. Good practices can reduce the level of contamination but they can't eliminate it unless then USDA is willing to mandate the use of irradiation which I suspect won't be a popular move. You should just assume that hamburger has e-coli and that chicken has salmonella. As long as you cook it properly you won't have a problem.

[Omelet]

I wonder if they will ever consider just irradiating meat. That should take care of it, permanently.

One way to help with the ground meat problem is to simply grind your own meat. I have a very nice meat grinder I bought on sale at Cabela's, and fresh ground meat is superior to pre-made patties any day. ;-d

I don't think that will help with contaminated greens tho'.

There have been a LOT more issues with washed bagged greens and e-coli than ground meat so going vegetarian won't totally avoid the problem either.

[Omelet]

All good points. ;-) I cook chicken thoroughly and keep all surfaces well cleaned when I work with it.

But, I like my beef rare, sometimes raw.

I've not purchase ground beef in ages but if I did, it would NOT be pre-formed patties. Our local grocery store grinds fresh ground beef 4 times per day so it would probably be pretty good, but if I really wanted a rare burger, I'd just go ahead and grind my own any more.

I personally don't have a problem with irradiated food. I don't see what the big deal is.

When I do eat raw beef, it's very lean top or bottom round and I cube it up myself just prior to consumption. I also rinse it well.

[General Schvantzkoph]

I agree with you on all of that. Beef is contaminated on the surface so there is nothing wrong with eating a steak that's seared on the outside and red on the inside (unless you are immune compromised). A hamburger is a different story. If you grind the meat yourself or buy fresh ground beef and use it immediately then a rare hamburger is fine. I only use hamburger in spaghetti sauce where it's thoroughly cooked. Restaurants won't server you a rare hamburger, it may be against the law or they might just want to avoid lawsuits, so the choice isn't ours anymore. Rare chicken isn't something that anyone really wants, I roast my chickens for

1.25 hours so that the skin is nice and crisp.

I don't think that there is any risk to irradiation but I don't know if it would effect the taste. I wouldn't want my steaks irradiated if there was any taste effects, I wouldn't object to hamburger and chicken being irradiated. However most people are squeamish about radiation so the USDA would have to allow the meat companies to call it Cold Pasteurization instead of irradiation if they wanted people to buy it.

[Omelet]

Indeed. Any bacteria on the surface of the meat gets mixed all in during the grinding, then it multiplies if allowed to sit.

Indeed. I have tried to order them a couple of times in the distant past, and they won't.

I personally don't care for raw chicken. It's gross. Sashimi quail eggs on the other hand...

I'd like to see more studies done. I suppose I could find some on google, but you'd think with all the uproar lately over contaminated foods, they would start at least considering it more.

I think people think it'd make their food "radioactive". Too many people just don't understand.

From what I understand, you can take a piece of raw meat, hermetically seal it in a mylar pouch and as long as that pouch goes undamaged, you don't even have to freeze it! You could store raw meat on your pantry shelves and it'd have a very long shelf life.

Maybe that is why they won't do it. A lot of people toss away a lot of spoiled and freezer burned foods.

[Jangchub]

Perfect, actually. B-12 is found in other ways being a vegan or vegetarian. We need 20-30 grams of protein each day. I get more than that.

V

[Jangchub]

Oh Ann it completely broke my heart in half when we drove through Amarillo TX for miles and miles of meat slaughter pens. It was freezing cold and all these animals were literally soaked in feces and urine and very cold with no cover from wind. I'll never eat meat again of any kind.

v

[Billy]

I think the point here is that irradiated shit is still shit. If the radiation can kill the pathogens, what do you think the consequences to meat processing would be. Tighter control on sanitation or less? Personally, I don't want my food irradiated or genetically modified. My body does fine with foods that come from the Earth. Eating foods from the laboratory is an experiment and I'm not interested in being a guinea pig. If people want to grow GMOs, they should be required to keep their GMOs gene pools to their property and should be fined if they drift away. Viva, José Bové.

[Omelet]

Just wondering... as I did research that. Vitamin B-12 is not found in vegetables.

I think you can use Brewers yeast supplements to get it?

[Omelet]

I understand what you are saying. I do not and probably will not ever trust GM foods, but that's not the same thing as irradiation treatment to kill bacteria.

Cooking food alters it too. It's probably why I get a craving for raw meat and raw egg yolks now and then (and I indulge myself!). In many ways, raw foods are more nutritious than cooked foods, up to a point.

Many harder vegetables are more difficult to digest without cooking, so you actually get MORE out of them by cooking them.

So, my point is, cooking alters your food.

I honestly don't know exactly what irradiation would do to food. Whether or not it would harm it any more than cooking it does. ;-)

So, would it be beneficial in that it'd kill bacteria (which are more sensitive to it) and would it _really_ harm or alter the food that much?

People fear what they don't understand. I'm still open minded about treating food that way until I find reasons to not do so.

I'll do some googling on it when I have more time and see what I can find out, if anything.

[Jangchub]

No argument here, but best check each and every product which has soy or corn because most processed foods have both and between the Bt corn and the "Round Up Ready" soy beans...geesh. People need to stop having children for a while. Too much food for too many people. Now Brazil is slashing and burning the rain forest again for soy farms.

[Jangchub]

I take Solgar vitamins and minerals. Most enriched foods have B-12 in them.

[Jangchub]

I think your research was limited because in ten seconds I found this:

way, I am lacto/ovo for now and slowly moving toward vegan. This takes time, and needs dilligence. On the other hand while red meat may provide certain things, it also provides artery clogging cholesterol, which mine is 130 total. Good is twice as high as bad.