The Following outlets were identified today by JBS Swift and FSIS:
Price Chopper
Hannaford
Stop & Shop
Food 4 Less
Fry's
Smith's
Costco
Sams Club
Kroger
SAV a Lot
Knight Super Foods #4
Weldon's Meat Market
Jasper Mercantile
Keeney's Food Mart
Sweetbay
All DAY AM PM MART
Hobby's Hoagies Produce
SHRTN HTL Produce
Giant
A few days before many of us light up the barbeque, JBS Swift and the FSIS finally publish the list of retailers who received the tainted-meat (click on below).
Frankly, the retailer names had trickled out over the last few days as responsible stores alerted thier customers. Whats a bit odd, it that the location of the stores that received the meat do not seem to completely match up to where the illnesses are located. According to the CDC, twenty three persons infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular "DNA fingerprint" have been reported from 9 states. Of these, 17 have been confirmed by an advanced DNA test as having the outbreak strain; confirmatory tests are pending on others. The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: California (4), Maine (1), Michigan (6), Minnesota (1), New Hampshire (1), New Jersey (2), New Mexico (1), New York (1) and Wisconsin (6). So, begs the question? "Where is ALL of the beef?".png)
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Several state health departments, CDC, and the United States Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS) are investigating a multi-state outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infections. On June 24, FSIS issued a notice about a recall of 41,280 pounds of beef products from JBS Swift Beef Company that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. On June 28, the recall was expanded to include 380,000 pounds of assorted pieces of beef (beef primal products) from the same company. Health officials in several states who were investigating reports of E. coli O157:H7 illnesses found that most ill persons had consumed ground beef, and many reported that it was undercooked. At least some of the illnesses appear to be associated with products subject to these recalls. Samples from unopened packages of ground beef recovered from a patient's home were tested by the Michigan Public Health Laboratory yielded an E. coli O157:H7 isolate that matched the "DNA fingerprint" of the outbreak strain.
Twenty three persons infected with a strain of E. coli O157:H7 with a particular "DNA fingerprint" have been reported from 9 states. Of these, 17 have been confirmed by an advanced DNA test as having the outbreak strain; confirmatory tests are pending on others. The number of ill persons identified in each state is as follows: California (4), Maine (1), Michigan (6), Minnesota (1), New Hampshire (1), New Jersey (2), New Mexico (1), New York (1) and Wisconsin (6).
Most ill persons reported consumption of ground beef, and many reported that it was undercooked. Ground beef with the outbreak strain was obtained from the home of one person infected with that strain. The first reported illness began on April 2, 2009, and the last began on June 13, 2009. Among 17 ill persons for whom hospitalization status is known, 12 (70%) were hospitalized. Two patients developed a type of kidney failure called hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS). No deaths have been reported. Of patients with available information, 14 (64%) were male and 59% are less than 19 years old (range 2 to 74 years).
Most of the beef packages in the first recall bear the establishment number "Est. 969" inside the USDA mark of inspection and have identifying package dates of "042109" or "042209." Consumers are urged to check their refrigerators and freezers for beef products produced by this firm and purchased on or after April 21, 2009 and discard or return the recalled beef products to the place of purchase for a refund. The pieces of beef (primal beef products) in the expanded recall were produced on April 21, 2009, and were distributed nationally and internationally. Boxes of these pieces of beef bear the establishment number "EST. 969" inside the USDA mark of inspection, the identifying package date of "042109," and a time stamp ranging from "0618" to "1130." These pieces of beef were sold to retail stores nationwide after April 21, 2009, and some was probably cut again or made into ground beef, then re-packaged, so packages purchased by consumers may not have identifying information. Customers with questions about the source of a package of beef should contact the place where they purchased it (e.g., grocery store, club store, or meat market).
The JBS Swift USA recall of 380,000 pounds of beef contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 also involves these retailers:
The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has so far been silent about the retailers involved in the recall. The retailers that have come forward have done so on their own.
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency advises that meat recalled by JBS Swift USA was sold under the President's Choice brand (steaks, roasts and ground beef) in the following stores:
Looks like JBS Swift USA has one customer coming forward on its own.
The Kroger Co. and its Fry’s, Smith’s, and Food 4 Less stores are all asking customers to check their freezers and return any beef with April 27-June 1 sell-by dates. The Smith's website has a good summary.
Kroger said it was “recalling select store-brand and store-packaged ground beef products because the beef was supplied by JBS Swift Beef Co. and may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.”
Kroger stores in the Greater Cincinnati area, including Dayton, northern Kentucky and southeastern Indiana; Greater Memphis, Tenn.; Arkansas, Mississippi; Indiana (except southwestern Indiana and Evansville); Illinois; and eastern Missouri sold the bad beef.
Smith’s stores, which are located in western states, are also involved in the recall. As are Food 4 Less stores in Illinois and Indiana and Fry’s Stores in Arizona.
Kroger, with $76 billion in sales last year, is the only retail chain to acknowledge its involvement in the JBS recall of beef linked by the Centers on Disease Control and Inspection (CDC) to a multi-state outbreak of E. coli O157:H7.
The Cincinnati-based Kroger has 2,475 stores in 31 states doing business under a bunch of names.
Still nothing from FSIS to indicate whether JBS sold meat to others besides the Kroger chain.
E. coli O157:H7 originates in the intestines of cattle. Cattle, as many as 6,000 a day, are killed, processed and packed at the Greeley Beef Plant owned by JBS Swift USA.
Yet JBS says the beef products it has recalled were contaminated outside their Colorado slaughtering plant because it was their customers that through trimming and grinding turned whole muscle cuts into ground beef.
“The ground beef that might have been associated with illness was produced by other companies, who often do not use the antimicrobial intervention steps we employ in our facility to reduce the risk of the beef products, JBS spokesman Chandler Keys told the Grand Island Independent.
“Nevertheless, we have agreed to expand our recall of whole muscle cuts out of an abundance of caution for consumers,” Keys said.
JBS upped its original June 24th beef recall to at least 380,000 pounds on June 28th after the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) linked meat produced by the Greeley Beef Plant to a multi-state outbreak of E. coli O157:H7.
The attempt to shift blame to its wholesale customers who took possession of the meat produced by the JBS facility on April 21st is unusual to say the least. JBS is the third largest beef producer in the United States, and is owned by the world’s largest beef producer, Brazilian-based JBS SA.
Keys says its wholesale customers are being contacted by phone and mail. He says the company is “working closely with the USDA to ensure that product is removed from the marketplace and the recall is completed successfully.”
Chances are what’s left of this tainted meat is not in the marketplace,” but in somebody’s freezer. Unless and until it’s connected with a retail source, most people are clueless as to whether they bought the bad meat.
There’s a PDF file of the products JBS produced on April 21st that are included in the retail, but that does not help anyone much. Keys offers the fairly useless suggestion people go have a chat with the butcher at their local retail store. Lot's of luck with that one.
The solution to the problem is public release of the list of the meat-receiving retailers, something the Bush Administration began during last year’s E. coli season. Under the new Obama Administration, however, that new policy has seen spotty enforcement.
Almost a week after the JBS beef recall began, there has been no list of retailers issued by either USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service, nor JBS. Nothing, nada, zip.
The world’s largest beef producer is now responsible for the year’s largest E. coli O157:H7 beef-related outbreak to date in America. The entry of JBS into a dominant position in the U.S. beef industry has been both recent and quick.
Dick and Charlie Monfort, who today together lead the group that owns the Colorado Rockies baseball team, would still probably have no trouble finding their way around the meat packing plant they once owned in Greeley, CO, 60 miles north of Denver.
They might have a harder time finding the gleaming headquarters building for JBS Swift USA, which today owns that Greeley packing plant and 15 others in the United States. JBS is located in “The Promontory” as far away to the West as you can get from the meat processing facility the Monfort family sold to ConAgra in 1987 for $300 million and still be in Greeley.
What Monfort Inc. sold became ConAgra Red Meats. It was next sold to an investor group and became part of Swift & Company. Two years ago, all Swift & Company operations in the U.S. were swept up for $1.4 billion cash by JBS SA, which is today the world’s largest beef producer.
How big? JBS has the capacity to kill, process, and pack 80,000 head of cattle per day. JBS operations include 22 in Brazil, 6 in Argentina, 10 in Australia, 10 in Italy, and the 16 in the US.
From his new offices, with striking views of Colorado’s Front Range, Wesley Batista, President and CEO of JBS Swift USA, can probably get to his estate-size home in Fort Collins, CO faster than he can drive through Greeley’s clogged street traffic to the meat plant on the east side of town.
But it was in that Greeley plant that on one day in April produced the bad beef now being recalled after they were linked to the current multi-state out break of E. coli O157:H7 that the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) says has made at least 18 people sick.
The Greeley beef plant has struggled with more than the turnover in ownerships since the Monforts left it to others. Even when Dick remained as a Con Agra executive, the Greeley plant suffered through a massive 19 million pound recall in 2002.
The darkest moment for the company and surrounding community came in December 2006 when federal agents raided six Swift operations in the U.S., including the Greeley plant and arrested a total of about 1,200 employees for alleged immigration violations.
Critics charged the raid was politically motivated to send a message to other employers and rounded up citizens and non-citizens alike so long as they did not speak perfect English and were not light-skinned.
That description also fits Mr. Batista, the Brazilian son of the 75-year old founder of JBS. He was took on the job of being CEO for JBS Swift USA because of his hand-on management style and experience in running beef processing plants. When he arrived in Greeley two years ago, he planned to work on his English before taking on a more public posture.
He is still working on his English, but has responded to demands to speak to cattlemen and community leaders where JBS Swift plants are located. Cattlemen are said to be less suspicious after hearing him and community leaders are downright giddy.
In addition to the new headquarters, Greeley has benefited from JBS adding a 250-truck transportation unit, expanding operations, adding shifts, and employing 1,500 more people. With two shifts going, the Greeley beef plant can process 6,000 cattle per day.
JBS Swift might have been the largest beef producer in the U.S., but the Bush Justice Department in October 2008 filed a challenge to its $560 million purchase of Kansas City-based Natural Beef. Cattlemen worried about “unbridled concentration.”
JBS pulled out of sale, leaving it No. 3 in the U.S. behind Tyson’s and Cargill. It did last year buy the Smithfield Beef Group, including the Five Rivers Cattle feed lot operation.
Now called “JBS Five Rivers,” it has ten feed yards with a one time capacity to fatten 820,000 head of cattle in four different states adjacent to the existing JBS slaughter facilities. Almost 2 million head of cattle were fattened in these feed yards in the last twelve months.
The Colorado Livestock Association heard from Batista last Friday. The beef recall had been announced a couple of days earlier, but had not yet been expanded to 380,000 pounds and connected to the multi-state E. coli O157:H7 outbreak by CDC.
If Batista mentioned the recall to the cattlemen, the Greeley Tribune reporter must not have thought it was important. What was important was talk about investment in cattle.
“Without cattle, we don't have an industry. We invested $3 billion here and we have only one raw product and that is cattle,” Batista said. “We are very optimistic and we are starting to see growth all over the world. There is some great opportunity out there and we all need to work towards that.”
This just came in from your federal government:
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has found E. coli O157:H7 (a bacterium that can cause serious food borne illness) in a sample of prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough currently under recall by the manufacturer and marketer, Nestlé USA. The contaminated sample was collected at Nestlé’s facility in Danville, VA on June 25, 2009.
On June 19, the FDA and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned consumers not to eat any varieties of prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough due to the risk of contamination with E. coli O157:H7. The warning was based on an epidemiological study conducted by the CDC and several state and local health departments. As of Thursday, June 25, the CDC reports that 69 persons from 29 states have been infected with the outbreak strain. Thirty-four persons have been hospitalized, nine with a severe complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome. No one has died. Nestlé USA has fully cooperated with the FDA and CDC investigation and has recalled all of its prepackaged Nestlé Toll House refrigerated cookie dough products.
Recall Release CLASS I RECALL
FSIS-RC-034-2009 HEALTH RISK: HIGH
This recall release is being reissued to expand the June 24 recall to include approximately 380,000 pounds of assorted beef primal products.
JBS Swift Beef Company, a Greeley, Colo., establishment is voluntarily expanding its June 24 recall to include approximately 380,000 pounds of assorted beef primal products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.
Together with traceback information and laboratory data, the recall is being expanded as a result of FSIS' cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in an ongoing investigation into 24 illnesses in multiple states, of which at least 18 appear to be associated. This investigation prompted the company to re-examine the effectiveness of their food safety system for the April 21 production of beef primals, and they are conducting this recall out of an abundance of caution as the safety of the products produced on a portion of that day could not be assured.
The beef products were produced on April 21, 2009 and were distributed both nationally and internationally. A list of the products subject to the expanded recall attached – 104 Pages.
Each box bears the establishment number "EST. 969" inside the USDA mark of inspection as well as the identifying package date of "042109" and a time stamp ranging from "0618" to "1130." However, these products were sent to establishments and retail stores nationwide for further processing and will likely not bear the establishment number "EST. 969" on products available for direct consumer purchase. Customers with concerns should contact their point of purchase.
The recalled products include intact cuts of beef, such as primals, sub-primals, or boxed beef typically used for steaks and roasts rather than ground beef. FSIS is aware that some of these products may have been further processed into ground products by other companies. The highest risk products for consumers are raw ground product, trim or other non-intact product made from the products subject to the recall.
At least when Nestles USA announced that it was recalling all its Toll House cookie products, the public knew which retailers were involved. Every retail grocery in the country provides generous space for Nestle products.
Nestle is currently at the center of the largest E. coli recall and largest E. coli outbreak in the country, and one-by-one the victims and their families are filing lawsuits against the cookie giant.
The deadly E. coli O157:H7 with a particular DNA fingerprint has linked 69 people in 29 states with the apparent cookie dough contamination.
Getting far less public attention than the Nestle’s E. coli O157:H7 cookie dough recall are seven beef recalls announced by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
When a meat processor recalls its beef, the information is not much use to consumers unless they are told which retailers and restaurants are selling the product. Time and time again, food safety advocates have found “recalled” items still on the shelves long after retailers were told to remove them.
A year ago, FSIS announced it would at least identify which retailers are involved in a recall within a three to ten day period. That new policy appears to be getting hit and miss attention this year by FSIS.
Andrew Shain at The State newspaper in South Carolina unsuccessfully attempted to get a list of retailers in that state who carry meat from JBS Swift Beef Company’s massive Greeley, CO processing plant, which has a recall out on 41,280 pounds of beef.
A JBS official told The State processors and stores did not want their names released and would “contact the public as they see fit.”
The JBS recall due to contamination by E. coli O157:H7 is the seventh to occur since May 4th. It was announced on June 24th, and no list of retailers has yet been made available by FSIS.
It came just two days after Chicago’s International Meat Company on June 22nd recalled 6,152 pounds of ground beef products believed to be contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7. That meat went to other distributors and restaurants in the Chicago area, so FSIS says there will be no list of retailers. (Restaurants must not be retailers, according to FSIS).
The 75 pounds of fresh beef trim products recalled on June 8th by Snow Creek Meat Processing in Seneca, SC all went to the Amazing Savings Stores in Asheville and Black Mountain, NC. The retailers were identified on the same day by FSIS.
It took two days after the June 2nd recall by Portland, OR-based SP Provisions of almost 40,000 pounds of E. coli-tainted ground products for FSIS to finger Riley’s Market in Bend, OR as the only retailer involved.
On May 21st, Coal Valley, IL-based Valley Meats LLC recalled 95,898 pounds of ground beef found contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 after an outbreak was discovered by the Ohio Health Department. Its by far the biggest recall of 2009, but FSIS claims no retailers are involved. It seems all the meat went to what FSIS said were “various consignees nationwide.”
The May 12th recall by Bob’s Food City in Hot Springs, AK of 375 pounds of ground beef products thought to be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 involved only that retail outlet and FSIS said so on the same day.
May 4th was the date of the first E. coli recall of both 2009 and the new Obama Administration. FSIS said none of the 4,663 pounds of ground beef products contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 went to retailers, only western New York restaurants. Alex & George Wholesale, Inc. of Rochester, NY issued the recall.
Seven beef recalls due to O157:H7 contamination so far in 2009 are for a total of 188,341 pounds. All seven are “Class 1, High Risk” recalls. At least one led to the outbreak in Ohio. And, the E coli beef season is just getting started.
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