E.coli and Salmonella are "Enteric" bacteria, which by definition means they emanate from animal intestines, and by extension, from manure-covered hides. The vast majority of meat processing plants in America do not slaughter, but merely purchase all their meat from source slaughter provider plants. The majority of E.coli recalls this century, all listed on the USDA Website, occurred at further processing plants which do NOT slaughter. E.S. Miller Packing Company is one of these further processing plants which do not slaughter, so they are victimized by unwittingly purchasing previously-contaminated meat from source slaughter providers.

USDA/FSIS now knows that the meat ground by E.S. Miller Packing Company was purchased from a slaughter plant in Windom, Minnesota, named PM Beef Holdings. It is interesting that this same Minnesota plant was involved in an earlier recall of E.coli meat in May of 2007, of a much larger amount of meat. The details can be found on the USDA Website. So much for corrective actions!

Unfortunately, USDA's policies have been designed to insulate source slaughter plants from accountability, while passing all liability downstream to the destination plants which innocently purchase USDA INSPECTED AND PASSED meat which is already adulterated with E.coli 0157:H7. These destination plants do not INTRODUCE E.coli into the food chain; they merely further process these invisible pathogens. Garbage in, garbage out.

Until USDA is willing to Force the Source plants to be responsible for meat which they contaminate, outbreaks and recalls will continue, and consumers continue to be imperiled, as do small further processing plants. It will be interesting to see if USDA suggests a recall from PM Beef Holdings of all trim produced on the same date as the trimmings which were implicated in this recall from E.S. Miller Packing Company. Don't hold your breath.

John Munsell, Manager, Foundation for Accountability in Regulatory Enforcement (FARE)
Miles City, Montana