According to a story in The New York Times, the Topps Meat Company, in an effort to produce an increased amount of frozen hamburger patties in the summer, neglected “critical safeguards meant to protect consumers.” The result was the contamination of “three big batches” of hamburger with E. coli O157:H7, a potentially-deadly pathogen. The most recent CDC count of confirmed cases of E. coli O157:H7 linked to Topps hamburgers is 40 people in 8 states.
As a result of the illnesses, Topps recalled almost 22 million pounds of ground beef and went out of business. The New York Times story goes on to say:
In the case of Topps, the government has determined that the company reduced its testing of ground beef and neglected other safety measures in the months before the recall.. . . Two years ago, after an 8-year-old girl in Albany County, N.Y., was sickened by Topps ground beef, the Agriculture Department scrutinized the Elizabeth plant and found relatively few problems. But since then, the department said, Topps cut its microbial testing on finished ground beef from once a month to three times a year, a level the department considers inadequate.
Federal investigators said they had recently learned that the company failed to require adequate testing on the raw beef it bought from its domestic suppliers, and it sometimes mixed tested and untested meat in its grinding machines.
The Agriculture Department acknowledged that its safety inspectors, who were in the Topps plant for an hour or two each day, never cited the company for these problems. [USDA inspectors were in the Topps plant an hour or two every day and did nothing? Is the problem that the inspectors were told not to cite Topps for obvious problems? Is the problem that the inspectors became too friendly with management to cite Topps? There should be a federal investigation of this case.]
Additionally, Topps, like many other beef processors, had bought an increasing amount of meat from overseas. Some types of meat from foreign countries — where E. coli has not been prevalent — are not required to be tested for contamination. But the Agriculture Department said the Topps case had prompted it to consider requiring such checks. [It appears that on every level Topps and the USDA failed to take measures to safeguard the American consumer.]
Source: Christopher Drew and Andrew Martin, "Many Red Flags Preceded a Recall of Hamburger," The New York Times, October 23, 2007.
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