Two reports of past inspections were made public today. The most notable inspection occurred in September 2006 at the Nestle plant in Danville, Virginia where it manufactures cookie dough products, as well as stuffed pastas and pasta sauces. A number of deficiencies were noted as part of the inspection. These were:
Three live ant-like insects
If everyone who takes a test is getting an A, how hard can the test be? This is the question that occurred to me yesterday watching a fine presentation by Dr. Paul A. Hall, Ph.D. Dr. Hall was the speaker who presented immediately before I did at the Almond Board of California’s 13th Annual Food Quality and
Small farmers, organic growers, raw milk drinkers and many others are organizing themselves on the Internet to kill HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.
And if there is not a vote on the floor of the U.S. House before the ten-day 4th of July break, opponents will have more
Consumer Confidence Has Crumbled Regarding Food Safety, Thanks to Massive Product Recalls…And That "D" Grade Is For Dangerous.
By Eddie Gehman Kohan, Editor in Chef of Obama Foodorama
A new study from IBM finds that sixty percent of eaters surveyed are worried that the food they consume may well be poisoned. That’s not a
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In the midst of yet another sprouts recall (see Bill’s recent blog-post), I received an email from a concerned sprout grower. I will freely admit that I feel for the people, and the businesses, involved in the manfacture or sale of food products (intrinsically risky or not) who are not the immediate source of a recalled or
According to a USDA Press Release issued on June 24, 2009, "JBS Swift Beef Company, a Greeley, Colo., establishment is recalling approximately 41,280 pounds of beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7." The USDA Press Release can be found here: www.fsis.usda.gov/News_&_Events/Recall_034_2009_Release/index.asp
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If the location of Greeley, Colorado sounds familar, that is because it has been the source of contaminated meat before, most notably in 2002, when the plant was still owned and operated by ConAgra. At the time, the recall was the second biggest in U.S. history. According to a news report at the time:
A report by the US Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) inspector general blames both federal meat inspectors and ConAgra Beef Co. for errors that led to a multistate outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections and an 18 million–pound ground beef recall last year.
USDA meat inspectors and the company largely ignored evidence of E coli O157:H7 contamination that began cropping up at the Greeley, Colo., plant in January 2001, more than a year before the recall and illness outbreak in May and June of 2002, according to the report. The plant was later sold to Swift Foods Co.
"Our audit found that neither ConAgra nor FSIS [the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service] effectively fulfilled their responsibilities" under the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, states the report from the office of Inspector General Phyllis K. Fong. HACCP has been the guiding strategy for the federal meat inspection program since 1998.
The report says the FSIS cited ConAgra for fecal contamination on beef carcasses many times before the recall but took no strong enforcement action and that most FSIS inspectors at the time of the recall were not competent to evaluate the plant’s HACCP program. The inspector general also concluded that poor record-keeping and red tape made the recall slow and ineffective.
Of course, the current recall is nowhere near as large as the one in 2002. (It involved meat produced on April 21st and 22nd that was shipped to distributors and establishments in Colorado, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah and Wisconsin.)
Moreover, the fact of the discovery of this contaminated meat may show that the USDA is finally getting better at prevention instead of merely reacting. But, seeing yet another recall linked to this Greeley plant, I can’t help but to think of that famous French phrase: Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. (The more things change, the more they stay the same.)
To see the list of recalled products, please clcik Continue Reading. Continue Reading Another Recall of Beef Products for E. coli O157:H7 Courtesy of Greeley, Colorado
In 1992 and 1993 when the Jack in the Box E. coli O157:H7 Outbreak occurred, and I got my introduction as an attorney to outbreak-related litigation, the meat industry looked very different than it does so today. The company that manufactured the hamburger patties for Jack in the Box—Vons Companies, Inc.—purchased meat to grind into hamburger from numerous companies, including Beef Packers Inc., Cattleman’s Choice, Fresno Meat Co., Monfort Inc., Orleans International Inc., RBR Meat Co., Service Packing Co. and Westland Inc. At the time, most of these companies were regionally-based, and not vertically integrated. Consequently, there were separate companies that ran slaughterhouse, boning operations, and packers, each sourcing from within their more immediate area of operations. There were also local and regional feedlots.
Today, that has all changed. Instead, there are huge mega-plants that combine all aspects of meat-production in a single, tightly integrated operation that produces meat products that are then distributed nationwide. That is why when you have E. coli O157:H7 outbreak involving meat products, the illness and death are widely spread, and the initial source of the contamination is sometimes difficult to trace back to its source. Back in the day, it simply was not possible to have product recalls involving millions of pounds of meat because no one was really producing and distributing it on that scale.So if you are looking for an additional argument in favor of a more local and regional based food supply, the prevention of mega-outbreak, courtesy of “Big Meat” (also known as the mega-meat industry, or Cargill/Conagra/Tyson triumvirate), is definitely a compelling one–in my humble opinion.
With this thought in mind, click on the Continue Reading link and check out a press release that was forwarded to me yesterday, which announced a recently released report about the demise of local small meat processing operations. And if you’re so inclined, read the entire report. It’s worth your time.Continue Reading A Big Reason Outbreaks involving meat are so big: Mega-Meat Plants
Hepatitis A (HAV) is a foodborne illness that is relatively uncommon in nations with developed sanitation systems. Despite this, approximately one-third of the United States population has at some point become infected with the hepatitis A virus, which causes an illness that ranges in severity from a mild illness lasting only a few weeks to
June 24th, 2009 By David Murphy
Just when America thought it was safe to go back into the grocery store, another food outbreak wakes us up to the fact that there is something seriously wrong with our food safety system. This time it’s Nestle Toll House cookie dough with E.coli, a treat that nearly every
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For any of you out there audacious enough to still consume raw sprouts (click here for a recent discussion of the problem), today’s announcement from the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) provides yet another example of why eating raw sprouts is simply not worth the risk. CDPH announced this afternoon that consumers should not