Who Does the USDA Really Protect When It Comes to Deadly E. coli?
August 18 2008 Denis Stearns’ OpEd on loopholes in the USDA E. coli regulation On October 3, 2002 I submitted a petition to the USDA in which I asked the agency to explicitly clarify whether a USDA policy that appeared to allow the deadly pathogen E. coli O157:H7 on so-called “intact meat” applied to meat sold to retail outlets like grocery stores and restaurants. Even now it is a near-universal practice for retail outlets to use this meat—commonly called “boxed beef” because the cuts of meat are individually shrink-wrapped and then boxed—to make ground beef. Sometimes the meat is directly used to make ground beef, and sometimes only trimmings are used—that is, the pieces left over after roasts and steak are cut and trimmed. Either way, there has never been any doubt that tens of thousands of grocery stores and restaurants use tons of intact meat every day to make ground beef. To my mind it makes absolutely no sense that the USDA would allow meat companies to sell intact meat contamina
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- Who Does the USDA Really Protect When It Comes to Deadly E. coli?
