Most Burger Fans Take Beef Scare in Stride

America’s love affair with the burger sizzles on, although E. coli and other realities of modern life are testing the passion of even the most ardent carnivores.

A day after the U.S. Agriculture Department pressured a big meat processor to close a plant that packaged contaminated hamburger patties and to withdraw an unprecedented 25 million pounds of meat from the market, construction workers, retirees and soccer moms throughout the Southland were still gulping down burgers on their lunch breaks Friday.

Of course, they could feel fairly confident because none of the suspect beef was sold in Southern California. Nonetheless, widespread publicity about the safety issue is causing even longtime beef fans to start questioning the wisdom of lusting after meat. Beef, after all, is one of the biggest sources of a virulent form of E. coli bacteria, which causes severe diarrhea and stomach cramps and can be fatal. And that could bode ill for the beef industry, which has glumly watched its market share tumble for two decades.

“Long term, any scare like this is detrimental,” said Andrew Gottschalk, senior vice president of Linnco Futures Group in Englewood, Colo., which follows the industry. “There’s no way you could say that this encourages people to consume more. You have every reason to believe they will consume less.”

Nonetheless, fresh from visiting her daughter and newborn granddaughter at Huntington Memorial Hospital, Pasadena resident Ada Page was sitting down for a Whopper and fries on the small back patio of Burger King.

“I ask for my meat well done,” she said. “Gone are the days when you could order a juicy, medium-rare steak without worrying about it.”

At the same eatery, Ronnie Allen and a construction co-worker were grabbing lunch.

“I do think you have to be concerned, to be aware of what you’re eating these days,” Allen said. “But . . . I’m not worried about this place.”

That would undoubtedly cheer executives at Burger King Corp.’s Miami headquarters. Since last week’s initial small recall of hamburger patties packaged by Hudson Foods Inc. of Rogers, Ark., the fast-food chain and other restaurants and grocery stores that had received Hudson beef products have moved aggressively to soothe customers’ concerns, particularly as the recall mushroomed to gargantuan proportions Thursday.

The stepped-up recall so depleted beef-patty provisions at 700 Burger Kings in Omaha, Denver and Minneapolis that the restaurants could not live up to their name, and meat-hungry customers were forced to choose chicken or fish.

By today, said Burger King executive Paul Clayton, “we’ll be 100% back in the burger business.”

In Santa Ana, Jennifer Takana and her three children headed into a Carl’s Jr. for lunch after soccer practice, and they weren’t too concerned about the meat recall.

“Unless it happens here and to me, I’m not worried,” Takana said.

Others, though, acted on their fears.

At a McDonald’s in Buena Park, Raul Santiago ordered a chicken sandwich instead of a burger.

“You just never know what is going to happen, so I’m being cautious and prefer not to eat red meat until this is over,” Santiago said. “I’m going to miss my beef patties.”

And at a new Boston Market in Pasadena, Kenneth Phillips said that he hasn’t eaten much beef anyway in the last few years and that the current recall might put him off it for good. One of his companions, Harold Hekiminan, was more philosophical.

“You know, when it’s your time, you’re going to die, no matter how health-conscious you’ve been,” Hekiminan said with a hearty laugh.

However, any worries about the safety of ground beef are not immediately translating into reduced sales at supermarkets. Representatives of some local chains speculated that food shoppers felt reassured because none of the beef from Hudson Foods ended up in Southern California.

Safeway, which carried some of the recalled beef in its Colorado stores, has received only one consumer inquiry at its Pleasanton, Calif., headquarters and has seen no change in beef sales, spokeswoman Debra Lambert said.

But the chain, with 1,368 stores nationwide under the Safeway, Vons and other names, is asking meat department employees to remind consumers about proper meat handling and cooking--information that is already printed on the label of every meat package sold, Lambert said.

“That’s an important lesson to be taken from this,” Lambert said.

At the 175 stores of Los Angeles-based Smart & Final, “it doesn’t seem to be scaring our customers away from making their normal purchases,” spokeswoman Lisa Van Velthuyzen said.

The bulk of the chain’s customers are food-service operators such as caterers and small-restaurant owners, who are perhaps more savvy than the average consumer, Van Velthuyzen said. But still, they are relieved to hear that Smart & Final doesn’t carry Hudson Foods beef, she said.

Likewise, mail-order shoppers phoning Omaha Steaks freely placed orders for steaks and ground beef after operators explained that the company received meat only from hand-picked processors--and none from Hudson Foods.

“It is a popular time of year, with Labor Day around the corner,” said Sharon Grunkin, a spokeswoman for the privately held company, based in Omaha.

Boston Market also scrambled in recent days to alert customers that it had safely disposed of all Hudson ground beef used to prepare meatloaf. Though supplied by Hudson, the ground beef was different from the meat used in the suspect frozen patties. (None of the Hudson product was sold to Boston Market locations in Southern California.)

In other U.S. regions, spot shortages of meatloaf at some outlets were being eased as other suppliers filled the void.

“Our goal is not to disappoint customers,” said Jeff Beckman, a spokesman for the 1,200-restaurant chain, based in Golden, Colo. “They come in expecting meatloaf, and we want them to have it.”

Americans consume about 70 million pounds of beef daily, and the American Meat Institute, a Washington trade group, reports that hamburger consumption has actually risen in recent years, to nearly 27 pounds per person in 1996.

But a variety of factors have caused consumers to back off from beef in general over the last 20 years. They include price, concerns about heart disease and other ailments, greater demands for convenience foods and, more recently, food safety scares, such as the current one involving the poisoning of 16 Colorado residents by Escherichia coli O157:H7 and the deaths of four children from E. coli in 1993 after they ate burgers at Jack in the Box locations.

In 1975, beef made up 52% of the nation’s meat and poultry category; now it constitutes 32%. As per capita red meat consumption has plunged by 16.7 pounds since 1970, per capita consumption of vegetables, fruits, grains and poultry have all soared.

Times correspondent Julio V. Cano in Orange County and Times wire services contributed to this story.