Ag Secretary Damage Control Over Hamburger E. coli
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U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is saying in the aftermath of a tough New York Times story about hamburger E. coli that federal regulators are working hard to reduce the incidence of E. coli O157:H7 and that public health -- not meat industry profits -- is the government's top priority.
That's not what a lower-ranking USDA official told Times reporter Michael Moss, who might win a Pulitzer Prize next year for his continued work on food safety. Dr. Kenneth Petersen, an assistant administrator with the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), told the Times that his department has the power to force grinding plants to test incoming beef trim for E. coli O157:H7.
A food safety officer at a major U.S. hamburger grinding company was on record in the Times' story as saying many big slaughterhouses won't sell beef trim and scrap to grinding plants if the plants test the shipments for E. coli. The admission was one of the most shocking revelations in the story considering that ground beef E. coli outbreaks are a chronic public health threat in the United States. An estimated five percent to 10 percent of infections develop into E coli HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome, the leading cause of kidney failure in children.
Said Petersen: "I have to look at the entire industry, not just what is best for public health.''
Vilsack tried to set the record straight by saying in his written press release that the "sole mission'' of FSIS is to protect public health.
But while Vilsack ticked off recent initiatives taken by USDA to reduce the incidence of E. coli O157:H7, he did not promise to mandate E. coli testing at the receiving docks of plants that grind beef trim and scrap into hamburger.
In 2008, USDA issued draft guidelines to the beef slaughter and grinding industry saying that every production lot should be sampled and tested before leaving the supplier and again at the receiver. After the proposed guideline received critical comments, the guidelines were never made official, the Times story said
In his statement this week, Vilsack made no mention of the specific testing issue. He would only say that USDA will "initiate a rulemaking'' in the near future to require all grinders to keep accurate records of the sources of each lot of ground beef..jpg)
The Times story investigated what ingredients were in Cargill hamburger patties that sickened more than 900 people in late 2007 with E. coli O157:H7. One of the victims -- a dance instructor from Minnesota -- developed HUS E. coli and was paralyzed from the waist down after the pathogen invaded her central nervous system.
The story revealed that the so-called "Angus Beef Patties'' sold by Cargill were actually made in Butler, Wisconsin, from cheap and fatty beef trim and beef scraps from four different suppliers -- one from Nebraska, one from Texas, one from Uruguay and one from South Dakota.
A central point to the story was that eating ground beef in America is still a gamble. If you or someone you love has fallen victim to E. coli 0157:H7, call an E. coli HUS lawyer at Pritzker Olsen Attorneys. Our firm is one of the few in the country practicing extensively in the area of foodborne illness and we have collected tens of millions for victims of food poisoning.
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To date, people in Minnesota, North Carolina, Tennessee and Wisconsin have confirmed cases of E. coli that are associated with the recalled Cargill hamburger patties. The E. coli O157:H7 strain involved in this outbreak is particularly dangerous and an unusually high number of people have developed 