The Bad Taste of Tainted Meat

“My promise to our customers has always been the same: to consistently provide the industry’s highest quality, best tasting beef with a commitment to environmentally sound practices, humane animal treatment and personal integrity. I stand behind this commitment the best way I know — by putting my name on everything we sell.”
- Robert E. Meyer, Founder and Owner, Meyer Natural Angus

So did Meyer Natural Angus live up to those words?

The company has been at the center of a hamburger recall at Whole Foods Markets. The beef in question was sold under the Coleman Natural brand -- a storied name that pioneered the natural meat business in this country but which has been sold at least twice and now is associated with tainted meat.

Coleman, to my knowledge, never had an e coli recall under its previous ownership. I interviewed Mel Coleman Jr. -- son of the founder -- and my impression was that food safety, as with no antibiotics and hormones, was at the forefront of its concerns.

So what happened? Meyer Natural Angus bought Coleman's beef business in April, leaving the Coleman company with its other meat and poultry operations. Just a few months earlier, Meyer Natural Angus had bought Laura's Lean Beef Co., another natural beef company in the East.

Meyer then switched slaughtering operations to the infamous Nebraska Beef plant that had received multiple citations from the Agriculture Department and which has had two recalls of ground beef this summer. (More background on the plant and what happened in a Washington Post article here.)

The Times pointed out that "most of the beef was sold at grocers other than Whole Foods and recalled this summer. An additional 1.2 million pounds were recalled on Friday by the processor after illnesses in several states were tentatively linked to ground beef sold at Whole Foods and other stores."

What's surprising is that Whole Foods didn't know Meyer Natural Angus had switched processing plants. This isn't a simple oversight, since Whole Foods has long audited the slaughterhouse facilities from which it is supplied. To switch plants without being informed would undermine its quality control system (and potentially its protocols on humane animal treatment). As the Times said:

Whole Foods acknowledged that a code stamped on beef packages arriving at its stores accurately reflected the change in processing plants. But the grocery chain said it had no procedures in place to watch the codes on arriving meat packages, and therefore failed to notice it was getting beef from a packing plant it had never approved.

Whole Foods will immediately institute new procedures to detect such a change in the future, the chain said.

The recall comes at a particularly bad time for the natural and organic retailer, which is facing a double-whammy of slower growth and a renewed FTC investigation into its purchase of Wild Oats. It also comes just as Whole Foods rolls out of its humane meat  ratings program -- on which it has been working for at least five years.

Past food safety incidents have shown that concentration increases the risk of tainted food -- in this case, in a processing plant with a known history of e. coli recalls and at a fast-growing meat company integrating multiple acquisitions. Indeed, it's difficult to see how Meyer Natural Angus could have hoped to stay true to its words while relying on Nebraska Beef for processing.

Comments

[Anna]

Yet another reason to wean one's self off the grocery store "habit" and find local food producers for produce, eggs, meat, and dairy. Consuming industrial food, even from Whole Foods, is risky business indeed.

Unfortunately, state and federal government regulations are making locally sourced meat harder to obtain. It's legal to raise one's own steer and send it to a local, state licensed processor, but it isn't legal to sell that processed meat to a neighbor (one has to buy the live animal from the producer before processing). That regulation doesn't make the meat any safer or less safe to consume - it just creates barriers of entry into the meat selling market, which hurts the small producers and consumers and protect the markets for the big producers.

[Sara DowntoEarth]

I am a little surprised at Meyer. As a Red Angus producer (and seller of meat at the local market), my knowledge of Meyer is that they have gone far beyond what is required for USDA certification to make sure that what they say they say is what they deliver. Unlike many "Angus" brands, Coleman actually pays significant premiums for cattle sired by registered Red Angus or Angus bulls.

You may be correct in questioning their ability to stay true to their priniciples in the face of expansion. I hope not. They were one of the few brands I trusted.

[Sam Fromartz]

Sara, Thanks for the comment. Meyer has been a bit reticent through this whole incident. Hopefully, they will explain what happened and why they were using this plant.

Anna, small producers aren't immune to these incidents but they don't get broadcast as widely because of far more limited sales. ALL producers need to follow good practices -- big and small -- to avoid problems such as these.

[Farmer Troy]

Does this recall affect Coleman brand natural hot dogs? I have some of them in the fridge right now . . . gotta admit they are the best tasting dogs on the market.

Did Chipotle have any problems in their restaurants with recalled meat? I'm fairly certain they use Coleman as a supplier in some areas for their "Food With Integrity" meats.

[Sam Fromartz]

My understanding is that the recall was limited to fresh ground beef. Hot dogs are cooked and then packaged, though you might want to double check on your packaging and/or call.

The e. coli issue only arises with uncooked meat, rare meat. Recommendations are to thoroughly cook it to 160 F, which I am fairly certain Chipotle achieves, judging by the extreme well-done taste of their meat.

From the FDA site:
http://www.foodsafety.gov/~dms/fttmeat.html
* All consumers should cook ground meat to at least 160° F (71° C). Use an accurate, instant-read food thermometer to check. Make sure the food thermometer goes straight into the meat, but does not come out the other side and touch the pan.

* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention link eating undercooked, pink ground beef with a higher risk of illness. If a thermometer is not available, do not eat ground beef that is still pink inside.

[Organic George]

It’s my understanding that WF only allows ground beef from primals and subprimals, not from trim, with has the most opportunity for contamination.

Also I read that the meat packers fought a new USDA proposed reg that would flag primals and subprimals that are contaminated with e-coli. Their twisted logic was that these sections are usually cut in to steaks and roast, so the contamination is limited to outside surface space, with are cooked on both sides so the e-coli is killed on the surface.

The new USDA proposed reg, which is in the development stage, is to have primals and subprimals irradiated to prevent the spread of e-coli.

[Rebecca T. of HonestMeat]

Although I do think we should hold any retailer responsible for a thorough awareness of their supply chain, it is the slaughterhouse system that is fundamentally broken in this country. From the processing of downer cows at the Westland/Hallmark plant, to worker abuse at the large, kosher plant (can't remember the name right now) to non-stop pathogenic contamination leading to the biggest year of meat recalls in history, you can understand what food retailers have to deal with (as in, a severely compromised meat supply). Via regulation and consolidation, we have shuttered nearly all small, localized meat processors in this country and we now depend on a few large mega abattoirs to do most of our processing. Ranchers have little to no choice about where to take their animals and only the biggest producers can afford to build their own processing plants. This is a problem that the "free-market" will not solve- it will take government intervention to reverse this trend.