Cargill E. coli outbreak gets bigger - fallout of beef recalls continues
Three students from Wisconsin and two North Carolina children were added to the number of E. coli illnesses caused by consumption of E. coli-contaminated ground beef patties produced by Cargill and sold by Sam's Club today. The students, from Marquette in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, all ate hamburgers served at a cookout before a soccer game on campus, according to news reports. The children, from Durham and Orange Counties in North Carolina, had both attended a cookout where hamburgers were served, according to public health officials.
And in Great Falls, Montana, the Great Falls Tribune published an editorial that focused on the recent recalls and meat safety. Excerpts from the editorial follow. First, the writer focuses on the large number of recalls - and not just food recalls - impacting Americans today:
Can you ever recall so many recalls?What's most disturbing is that, with both the tainted toys and the ground beef, children are those most threatened by the health hazards. That and the fact that the products found their way to so many American toy boxes and dinner plates before consumers were alerted to the risk.
The headlines hit home again in Great Falls Saturday when Sam's Club stores recalled ground beef patties contaminated by E. coli bacteria. After four Minnesota children were sickened by the tainted meat, Sam's Club pulled more than 840,000 pounds of patties nationwide.
Then, the writer addresses the fact that in the Topps case, federal investigators and Topps were aware that there was E. coli contamination in Topps meats for weeks before the product was recalled:
We understand the agency's hesitancy to order truckloads of fresh beef to the landfill. The recall shut down the Topps plant in Newark, N.J., a family business established in 1940. Some 87 people lost their jobs.The ripple effect may even be felt here in cattle country as the most finicky consumers cut beef patties from their grocery lists, at least for a while.
But the agency's bottom line is the protection of human and animal health, not protection of the marketplace. And consumer trust in beef products is worth more than the fallout from one recall, no matter how damaging.
The editorial concludes with a suggestion that consumers start using meat thermometers to determine whether their hamburgers and other beef products are cooked to a temperature hot enough to kill E. coli O157:H7 and other pathogens, but in all reality, E. coli shouldn't be getting in ground beef to begin with.
