Possible E. coli contamination forces recall of ground beef

August 1, 2000 Web posted at: 2:05 PM EDT (1805 GMT)

ERIE, Pennsylvania (Erie Time News) -- About 350,000 pounds of ground beef are being recalled from Pennsylvania and 10 other states because the meat may be contaminated with dangerous E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria.

But consumers have no way of knowing whether that beef is in their homes because the U.S. Department of Agriculture won't say which grocery stores or restaurants sold it. The USDA considers that information to be a proprietary business secret.

All the USDA will say is that the meat was produced July 11 by Moyer Packing Co. in Pennsylvania, sent to wholesalers in 11 states, and likely reground and repackaged by grocery stores.

"Purchasers of ground beef may wish to ask retailers if ground beef at their stores was produced with any of the recalled product," Margaret Glavin, associate administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said in a statement. It is the USDA's long-standing policy not to disclose the names of businesses that received tainted meat, a USDA spokeswoman said Sunday.

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Such secrecy outrages U.S. Rep. Lynn Rivers, D-Ann Arbor, who wants to hold hearings later this year on the effectiveness of food recalls.

"They're putting business interests ahead of public health interests," Rivers said Sunday. "This issue surfaces again and again, and the public doesn't understand why they can't get more information."

Rivers said consumers deserve more information -- and it should come from regulators, not industry. "The problem with the system is we shouldn't have to take the word of the distributor," she said.

USDA officials contend they are prohibited by law from revealing company trade secrets.

The U.S. General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, is expected to release a report in mid-August on the effectiveness of the nation's food-recall system. The investigation was requested last fall by Rivers and U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, after investigations by the Free Press revealed gaps in the nation's food safety and problems with secrecy during food recalls.

Although the Moyer Packing recall wasn't announced to the public until Saturday evening, the company has been quietly pulling meat off the market for nearly a week. Roush said Moyer Packing began a "voluntary withdrawal" July 25 after the USDA's testing at a grocery store in Lawrence, N.Y., detected E. coli 0157:H7.

The USDA's tests, which proved Moyer was the source of the E. coli contamination, didn't come back until around noon Saturday, and it wasn't until that evening that the USDA posted a news release on its Web page announcing a formal recall.

E. coli 0157:H7 is a potentially deadly bacteria that can cause bloody diarrhea and dehydration. Very young and elderly people and those with compromised immune systems are most susceptible to serious illness and even death.

E. coli 0157:H7 sickens an estimated 73,500 people in the United States each year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Moyer meat covered by the recall was in 5- and 10-pound packages marked MOPAC ground beef, with a production code of "07/11/00" and with "Est. 1311" inside the USDA mark of inspection.

The packages were shipped to wholesalers in Michigan, Connecticut, Delaware, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin.

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