February 11, 2010 
This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 5:37 pm and is filed under Food, Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
February 9, 2010
Thousands of times each year, government inspectors test the meat and trimmings that become ground beef for E. coli, a potentially deadly pathogen that has led to outbreaks of food-borne illnesses and massive product recalls.
But when those inspectors get a test result indicating the dangerous pathogen is present, as records show they do dozens of times a year, officials at the U.S. Department of Agriculture do not conduct a full investigation like those done in response to disease outbreaks.
After a routine test comes up positive, officials and the processor try to prevent tainted meat from reaching consumers, either by making sure it does not leave a plant or by bringing back products that have been shipped. But inspectors do not try to pinpoint the source of contamination or track down additional meat that might be contaminated.
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