The United States Department of Agriculture
exempted “pink slime” made by Beef Products International in South Dakota from
food-poisoning recalls because officials considered it safe.
It isn’t always safe.
Whistleblowers who worked as meat inspectors and
school lunch program staff for the United States Department of Agriculture knew
it was sometimes contaminated with harmful bacteria as did a whistleblower who
worked for Beef Products which was the first and biggest producer of pink
slime.
The whistleblowers were harassed out of their
jobs and the risky product continued to be incorporated in hamburger by the
nation’s largest fast-food chains, supermarket chains and in the school lunch
program.
The whistleblowers estimate that 70 per cent of
the hamburger sold by supermarket chains in the U.S. contained pink slime, a
term coined by a USDA meat inspector in 2002; he was harassed out of work for
the department.
Health Canada won’t allow it to be made here or imported.
The industry calls it finely-textured lean beef.
It is beef trimmings that used to go for rendering or pet food until Beef
Products Inc. developed a process to inject it with ammonia which it claimed
would kill all harmful bacteria.
But government and industry records obtained by
The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli
and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat,
challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of
the treatment.
This shows me that too often it requires a combination of whistleblowers and news-media reporters to root out corruption in the food industry. Neither the whistleblowers or the reporters get rich, but society reaps huge benefits.
The New York Times dug into the USDA records to find that since 2005, E. coli has been found three times
and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August of 2011 in
which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught
before reaching lunch-rooms trays.
In July, school lunch officials temporarily
banned their hamburger makers from using meat from a Beef Products facility in
Kansas because of salmonella — the third suspension in three years, records
show. Yet the facility remained approved by the U.S.D.A. for other customers.
“Presented by The Times with the school lunch
test results, top department officials said they were not aware of what their
colleagues in the lunch program had been finding for years,” wrote the New York
Times.
In response, the agriculture department said it
was revoking Beef Products’ exemption from routine testing and conducting a
review of the company’s operations and research.
The department said it was also reversing its
policy for handling Beef Products during pathogen outbreaks.
Since it was seen as pathogen-free, the processed
beef was excluded from recalls, even when it was an ingredient in hamburgers
found to be contaminated.
“The Beef Products case reveals a schism between
the main Department of Agriculture and its division that oversees the school
lunch program, a divide that underscores the government’s faltering effort to
make hamburger safe,” the newspaper reported.
The U.S.D.A. banned the sale of meat found to be
contaminated with the O157:H7 strain of E. coli 15 years ago, after a deadly
outbreak was traced to Jack in the Box restaurants. Meat tainted with
salmonella is also a hazard.
“But while the school lunch program will not buy
meat contaminated with salmonella, the agriculture department does not ban its
sale to the general public,” the report says.
Even so, E. coli outbreaks nationwide have
increased in recent years. And this summer, two outbreaks of particularly
virulent strains of salmonella in hamburger prompted large recalls of ground
beef across several states.
Although no outbreak has been tied to Beef
Products, officials said they would thoroughly scrutinize any future industry
innovations for fighting contamination “to ensure that they are scientifically
sound and protect public health,” and that they were examining the government’s
overall meat safety policies.
