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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/health/04meat.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=allPublished: October 3, 2009
Stephanie Smith, a children’s dance instructor, thought she had a stomach virus. The aches and cramping were tolerable that first day, and she finished her classes.
Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked her unconscious. The convulsionsgrew so relentless that doctors had to put her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.
The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria.
“Ground beef is not a completely safe product,” said Dr. Jeffrey Bender, a food safety expert at the University of Minnesota who helped develop systems for tracing E. coli contamination. He said that while outbreaks had been on the decline, “unfortunately it looks like we are going a bit in the opposite direction.”
HEALTH
Tainted Meat
The Sickening of Stephanie Smith
Cargill, whose $116.6 billion in revenues last year made it the country’s largest private company, declined requests to interview company officials or visit its facilities.
"It is unclear whether Cargill presented the Hawaii findings to Greater Omaha, since neither company would comment on the matter."
Food Safetyhttp://www.greateromaha.com/food-safety
Greater Omaha Packing Co., Inc. operates one of the newest beef processing facilities in the country. Built in 2001, our harvesting plant utilizes the newest and best technologies available within the industry to remove bacteria. We employ a multi-hurdle concept with twelve separate processes, each of which is a validated pathogen intervention procedure. These steps include controlled atmosphere, steam vacuums, hot water and acid rinse cabinets, and steam pasteurization cabinets. The industry views each of these methods as viable steps. Used in multiple hurdle configuration, they are extremely effective. Greater Omaha is dedicated to producing the safest and most wholesome beef product available in the industry today.
In examining Cargill, investigators discovered that their own inspectors had lodged complaints about unsanitary conditions at the plant in the weeks before the outbreak, but that they had failed to set off any alarms within the department. Inspectors had found “large amounts of patties on the floor,” grinders that were gnarly with old bits of meat, and a worker who routinely dumped inedible meat on the floor close to a production line, records show.
In the weeks before Ms. Smith’s patty was made, federal inspectors had repeatedly found that Cargill was violating its own safety procedures in handling ground beef, but they imposed no fines or sanctions, records show. After the outbreak, the department threatened to withhold the seal of approval that declares “U.S. Inspected and Passed by the Department of Agriculture.”
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