On Tuesday, September 22, 2026, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service announced a Class I recall of approximately 167,639 pounds of raw pork, beef and goat products from Star Meat Delivery Inc. of North Carolina, produced without federal inspection and stamped with a counterfeit USDA mark of inspection reading EST. 1363. The meat went to A&D Foods in Georgia and was sold under the A&D Foods label to restaurants and retailers nationwide. No illnesses had been reported as of the announcement.

The establishment number on the label belongs to no one.

Every federally inspected meat plant in the country carries an establishment number, and that number inside the USDA shield is the consumer’s only visible proof that an inspector was in the building. According to the recall notice as reported by Newsweek and the Fox station wire, EST. 1363 has no grant of inspection behind it. The number was not borrowed from another plant. It was invented, printed and applied to about 80 tons of meat.FSIS says the problem surfaced through its own surveillance activities, not through a customer complaint or a sick person, and that more products may be added as the investigation continues. The list so far runs to 23 items: ground pork, pork chorizo, pork chops, pork feet, ribs, Boston butt, hocks, menudo mix, goat cuts, and beef ribeye, chuck, oxtail, short ribs, shanks and feet, all packed for A&D Foods. Star Meat Delivery can be reached at 252-239-0610 and the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 888-674-6854.

Uninspected meat is a Class I recall because nobody knows what is in it.

FSIS uses the same sentence every time it recalls meat produced without inspection: the product could contain “undeclared allergens, harmful bacteria, or other contaminants.” That is not boilerplate. Federal inspection means a veterinarian examined the animal alive and a carcass inspector examined it dead, the plant operated under a written hazard plan, sanitation was verified every shift, and the results were written down. Take inspection away and there is no record of whether the animal was sick, how it was slaughtered, what touched the carcass, or whether Salmonella or E. coli testing was ever done. The absence of a pathogen finding is not a finding that pathogens are absent. Nobody looked.“No illnesses reported” deserves the same care. Most of this meat went to restaurants. A person who gets sick after a restaurant meal is rarely tested, and when the test comes back the package is long gone. The honest statement is that no illness has been linked, which is a different thing.

This is the second uninspected-meat action of 2026, and the pattern is much older.

On March 26, FSIS issued a public health alert for beef and pork from Blackwing Organic Meats, produced without the benefit of inspection from April 2024 through March 2026, shipped nationwide, and possibly bearing a false mark of inspection. Two years of product moved before anyone caught it.The case worth remembering is Rancho Feeding Corporation of Petaluma, California, which in 2014 recalled a full year of beef, about 8.7 million pounds, after employees processed cattle that USDA veterinarians had condemned. That one ended in a federal courtroom. In February 2016 the company’s co-owner, Jesse “Babe” Amaral Jr., was sentenced to 12 months and a day for conspiring to distribute adulterated, misbranded and uninspected meat, after admitting his crews swapped the heads of healthy cattle onto cancer-eye carcasses and cut the “USDA Condemned” stamps off the meat. Nobody in the beef business has forgotten that sentence. That is what deterrence looks like.

The law already makes a fake USDA mark a crime.

Congress wrote this one down decades ago. Under 21 U.S.C. § 611(b), no person may forge any official device, mark or certificate, use one without authorization, or knowingly represent that an article has been inspected and passed when it has not. Under 21 U.S.C. § 676(a), a violation carries up to a year in prison and a $1,000 fine, and where it involves intent to defraud or the distribution of adulterated product, up to three years and $10,000. A counterfeit inspection shield is about as clean a case of intent to defraud as the statute contemplates.The numbers, laid side by side, explain why the fine alone deters nothing.

Source: FSIS recall notice of September 22, 2026, as reported by Newsweek and the Fox station wire; 21 U.S.C. § 676(a). Check: $10,000 ÷ 167,639 pounds = $0.0597, which rounds to six cents a pound.Six cents a pound is not a penalty. It is a licensing fee. The only number on that table that changes anyone’s behavior is the one measured in years, and it changes behavior only when the government uses it.

Deterrence is the point, and this week keeps making it.

On Monday I wrote about Tom Gremillion’s argument that criminal enforcement, not civil settlements, is what moves a food safety budget, and this morning his Food Safety News column put it in one sentence: without a credible threat of criminal enforcement, expect companies to invest less in food safety, and more foodborne illness outbreaks. Over the weekend I noted that Abbott paid $385 million and nobody was charged. Those cases involve arguments about knowledge and causation. This one does not. A counterfeit federal inspection mark on 167,639 pounds of meat requires no epidemiology, no traceback and no expert on either side. The document is the crime.Credit where it belongs: FSIS surveillance found this, and the field people who found it did their jobs. The question that decides whether it happens again is what comes next, and that is a decision for the Office of Investigation, Enforcement and Audit and the U.S. Attorney, not the inspector. I have watched the federal meat program since the 1993 Jack in the Box outbreak, and Rancho ended in a prison sentence for one reason: somebody referred it. A press release and a recall notice are not a referral. I will be watching for one.

What to do if you bought or served A&D Foods meat.

Do not eat it. FSIS says the products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase, and restaurants and retailers should not serve or sell them. If you run a restaurant or a market that buys from A&D Foods, pull anything marked EST. 1363 and hold your invoices; FSIS has said the product list may grow, and its recall page is where any retail distribution list will be posted. If you ate this meat and became ill, see a doctor, tell them about the recall, and ask for a stool culture. An illness that is never tested is an illness that will never be counted.

Three questions people are asking about the A&D Foods meat recall.

Is A&D Foods meat safe to eat? Not the products in this recall. They were produced without federal inspection and carry a counterfeit USDA mark, so no one can say what is in them. Throw them away or return them.What products are in the Star Meat Delivery recall? Twenty-three raw pork, beef and goat items sold under the A&D Foods label, including ground pork, chorizo, pork chops, ribs, Boston butt, hocks, menudo mix, goat cuts, ribeye, chuck, oxtail, short ribs and shanks, all marked EST. 1363. The full list is on the FSIS notice, and FSIS says it may add to it.Has anyone gotten sick from the recalled meat? No illnesses had been linked to the products as of September 22, 2026. That means no one has been connected to the meat yet, not that the meat was clean. Nobody inspected it.