U.S. Inspectors to Visit Source of Recalled Beef

A special team of government investigators will this week visit the plant that produced 1.2 million pounds of frozen hamburger patties that were recalled, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said Sunday.

A dozen inspectors from the Department of Agriculture’s food safety division and inspector general’s office are on their way to Hudson Foods Inc. in Columbus, Neb., to examine plant records and meat processing procedures, Glickman said.

“We welcome that because we’re not afraid of what they will find,” James Hudson, chairman and founder of the beef and poultry processing company, told reporters.

On Friday, the department announced the largest recall of U.S. ground beef products in history, citing possible contamination with a deadly strain of the E. coli bacterium. Health officials blamed the beef and the microbe for 16 cases of illness in Colorado in July.

“I want to send a signal throughout the industry that we will not tolerate practices which are . . . incompatible with public health,” Glickman told CNN’s “Late Edition” program. “We got to find out why it happened and put a stop to it,” he said.

The strain of E. coli suspected of contaminating the beef can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and, in some, life-threatening kidney failure.

Hudson Foods was responsible in 1995 for the United States’ biggest previous meat recall. That involved bits of turkey bone in packaged meat.

And the company was fined more than $300,000 last month by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration for repeated violations of federal worker safety rules, the Washington Post reported Sunday.

Soon after Glickman’s televised appearance, Hudson held a telephone news conference and said the company is cooperating fully with the Department of Agriculture.

“We’re still baffled as to where it came from,” Hudson said of the contamination, adding that it might have occurred before the meat arrived at the plant.

Hudson said the company had purchased foreign beef in the past, including beef from Australia, but all beef produced at the plant on the June recall dates had been domestic beef.

In recent months, Hudson Foods has conducted 57 tests on its beef patties to detect E. coli, he said.

The amount of meat being recalled is far bigger than in any previous ground beef recall and 60 times the 20,000 pounds the Department of Agriculture initially said Hudson Foods was taking back. Hudson said he does not believe the quantity would grow again.

“I’m concerned that the thing grew so rapidly, and that also happened a few years ago,” Glickman said.

Asked why the company is still operating after two large recalls, Glickman said: “I’m not in a position to judge the company right now. . . . We have to conduct an investigation to determine if there is a pattern or not.”