Meat With E.coli Sold As Fresh: Feds Want To Know Why Company Used Tainted Beef 9 Times

September 4, 2002

Federal investigators want to know how a Minnesota company nine times mixed fresh meat with 18-month-old contaminated beef planned for pet food, then shipped it to hotels and restaurants in Colorado and 19 other states.

And why it took a month to catch the error.

Colorado health officials learned only last week that some of the meat made it to the state - five days after GFI American in Minneapolis and the U.S. Department of Agriculture recalled 717,000 pounds of meat products that might contain potentially lethal E. coli bacteria.

Health officials do not know who in Colorado got the meat because federal law prevents the USDA from disclosing that information.

The Aug. 22 recall is the 73rd announced by the USDA this year, and consumer safety groups say it raises additional questions about how the agency protects the public from contaminated meat.

"Clearly this shows the lack of USDA standards for ensuring contaminated meat is disposed properly," said Caroline Smith-DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C. "If tainted meat is hanging around a freezer for a long time, it's bound to show up in the food supply somehow. The USDA has to develop a method to ensure mistakes like this one don't happen."

For now, GFI will say only that it was "inadvertent" that tainted meat stored in a freezer was mixed with fresh beef on nine days in June and July.

The 18-month-old tainted meat was miscoded on the company's computer system, GFI vice president Joe Goldberger said. The problem was discovered in August during a company audit of its inventory several weeks after the meat had been shipped to customers.

USDA regulations require contaminated meat to be segregated from edible products. Meat found to have E. coli must be labeled properly, and the USDA is supposed to ensure that it is destroyed or cooked so that the pathogen is killed.

The recall affects a variety of raw products, such as Salisbury and veal steaks, and beef patties.

The USDA is partly responsible for monitoring what happens to tainted meat, so department investigators want to know how its inspectors, and GFI, lost track of this batch.

Also unclear is why GFI kept the meat so long after tests showed it contained the pathogen.

"I'm sure that is one of the key questions to answer," USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said.

Goldberger of GFI refused to say how much contaminated meat was used, or how much had been sitting in a freezer since early 2001. He said the company regularly tests its products for E. coli and found none on the days the recalled meat was produced.

No illnesses have been reported from the recalled meat.

Goldberger said the company had been "actively involved" in seeking a pet food company to buy the tainted meat.

"Family members and the families of our employees are proud of our safety record and safely eat our products every day," Goldberger said. "In 26 years, we have never had a confirmed illness attributed to any of our products."

The recalled meat was sold to institutions such as hospitals, prisons, hotels and restaurants, the USDA's Cohen said, refusing to elaborate.

Federal law allows the USDA to withhold information on where meat was sent - it's considered a company trade secret - even if consumers demand to know.

State health officials said they don't know which Colorado companies received the meat, or which consumers might be at risk, because the USDA won't tell them.

And it took the USDA five days to tell the state that much. That happened last Tuesday.

"All we know is it was shipped to two or three firms in Colorado," said Patti Klocker, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment's assistant director of consumer protection.

A new USDA law allows states to learn where recalled products are shipped - but only if state health officials agree not to disclose it publicly.

Colorado, however, cannot get the list because the state's open-records law would require it to be made public if anyone asked, The Denver Post reported last month.

"This shows the USDA can't make the transition to being a public health agency," said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at Consumer Federation of America in Washington, D.C. "They think first of not inconveniencing companies and not letting product go to waste."

Problems with the nation's recall system were magnified in July during a massive recall by ConAgra Beef Co. in Greeley. The USDA for two weeks sat on news that the company's meat was suspect for E. coli contamination. The resulting recall became the second largest in U.S. history.

The USDA kept secret the names of companies that sold the tainted meat, preventing consumers from learning whether they had any of the product in their freezers. Forty-seven people were sickened and one died after they were infected with the same E. coli found in the meat.

ConAgra eventually gave the list to state health departments that asked for it.

"It's very troubling that the USDA delays in alerting state public health officials that they have recalled product," said Smith- DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "The USDA relies on companies to voluntarily disclose this information, and we're seeing over and over how that just isn't working."

David Migoya can be reached at dmigoya@denverpost.com or 303- 820-1506.
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