Millions of Pounds of Ready-to-Eat Beef, Chicken Recalled Due to Listeria
Affected products may have been used in ready-to-eat products that are “on store shelves or in consumers’ refrigerators or freezers,” or available for use by restaurants and other establishments.
The last time I reported on the potentially deadly foodborne illness called listeria, an outbreak from contaminated Bor’s head meat had claimed the lives of 10 people.
Now, a major meatpacker has recalled nearly 10 million pounds of ready-to-eat beef and poultry items due to fears that they may be contaminated with listeria.
BrucePac, the company based in Durant, Okla whose brand names include Urban Bruce and City Grillers, said it was recalling 9,986,245 pounds of ready-to-eat products that were produced from June 19 of this year until Oct. 8, according to the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
“These products were shipped to other establishments and distributors nationwide then distributed to restaurants and institutions,” the agency said on Wednesday.
The USDA said it discovered the issue after conducting routine testing of poultry products. The testing came back positive for Listeria monocytogenes, a species of bacteria that causes infection and could lead to death in severe cases.
Listeriosis (also referred to as listeria) is an infection caused by the bacterium Listeria monocytogenes. It occurs when contaminated food (in this case, deli meat) is eaten. Mild cases can result in nausea, diarrhea, and other flu-like symptoms. More severe cases can result in blood poisoning, meningitis, and death.
The good news is that no “adverse effects” have been linked to the BrucePac meats.
So far there have been “no confirmed reports of adverse reactions due to consumption of these products,” the USDA said Wednesday. However, some people who get ill recover without being tested for listeria and it usually takes weeks to link an illness with an outbreak. It can take up to 10 weeks for symptoms of listeria infection to begin.
“Restaurants, institutions, and other establishments are urged not to serve or use these products. These products should be thrown away or returned to the place of purchase,” the USDA said. “Anyone concerned about an illness should contact a healthcare provider.”
I will note that the magnitude and timing of these listeria incidents are troubling. I would like to know the root causes of the BurcePac and Boar’s Head cases.
Food security is national security. And by food security, I mean protecting the food from destruction or contamination from growth or birth to packaging.
Furthermore, it will be interesting to see how much impact the loss of 10 million pounds of meat will have on inflation.
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Comments
Welcome to the DEI/CYA era, where everything is overreactive due to no proactive measures on the production floor….run it until someone gets sick, then try and recall the product.
They are gambling with the wrong pot.
How many of those “immigrants” on the Tyson or other mega-food processor payrolls know what “wash your hands” means?
I don’t remember recalls like this from even just a few years ago.
They know to llavas de manos, but they can’t perform titrations to ensure the chlorine residuals are at the correct level in step 5 of the CIP sanitation process, and when they do it is a “pencil whip” job.
Lávese las manos. And just for good measure. Por favor, utilice papel higiénico. Of course, I’m assuming Spanish. We may need a few more translations, especially for the toilet paper.
For the Haitians it is Haitian Creole. So of course they sent most of them nowhere near La. where someone could probably figure out how to communicate using commonalities in La. Creole. Portugese speak…portugese which is closer to French than Spanish. Venezuelans have so many dialects that it is a hard job to figure out the commonalities to Spanish, but more of them speak English too.
Hmm..I guess we need some easy to understand pictures in a remedial potty class.
Not many. I delivered to many sweet potatoe sheds, tobacco sheds and picked up at several of the largest meat packing plants in NC and VA. Especially in the vegetable sheds many signs reminding to wash hands, not squat on top of the toilet and put toilet paper into the toilet not garbage.
All those poor animals deaths for nothing
“The good news is that “adverse effects” have been linked to the BrucePac meats.”
I think this sentence is missing a “no”.
Thank you for the catch,..it is appreciated.
Please also note that the previous issue was related to Boar’s Head products, not “Bor’s head”.
Not to Smithfield. Good news for them and Boar’s Head is glad to be out of the press so a win for them too
And the sad part is that all one-million pounds of meat was inspected by FSIS, a sub-department of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and marked with the seal declaring “✭ Inspected ✭ For Wholesomeness By U.S. Department of Agriculture” and has the implied guarantee that the food product is safe for consumption. But of course, we know that isn’t true. It’s far from true.
government in charge equals chaos bribes etc
if the companies knew they could be sued and/or executives (jailed for knowingly allowing bad food to the market) held responsible instead of the answering to those they sleep with
america would run a lot smoother and fair
Contamination with pathogens is and always was a danger in factory food. It is made much more serious nowadays by the QUANTITY of foodstuffs which can be affected and distributed before routine testing catches problems.
Add to this the number of low-paid illegals hired by large food processing facilities and you have a workforce which is culturally casual about sanitation and much more likely to ignore food safety requirements than the workers of old.
It would seem reasonable to limit the amount of food in your diet which has an ingredient list and stick to whole food, unprocessed or at least locally processed, for a whole host of reasons, this being one.
IMO there’s a market for smaller meat processor/packers using locally and/or regionally raised livestock. The issue is cost for consumers. Paying illegals and/or 1st gen legal immigrants low wages keeps prices low.
Would consumers be willing to pay higher prices to support smaller ranchers/farms and smaller processors all of which have less ability to get economies of scale than big corporations? Then there’s new regs proposed on the run off from processing/packers to include waste that goes into the treatment facility. Not discharge into the watershed to hide it but to water that flows to the water treatment facility. Not post treatment levels but pre treatment levels. Insane policy that will drive even more smaller, regional, local meat processor/packers put of business.
Truth be, no one wants to murder animals and tear them apart for a living
It is a job most Americans don’t want to doing
That cheap chicken, pork and beef is not processed for the .most part by Americans. It is a gastly production line business. If you have ever been in a commercial slaughterhouse you know what I mean. One pork plant I’ve been to used a bucket loader to move culled pig carcasses.
I had a HS buddy whose family owned a local processing/packing plant..Still in business, they produce lots of bacon, sausage as.well as beef. They butcher and grind your deer in season and will do so for other animals from size of goats up.
Anyway he was the third son. Told me if he ever was in position to do so he’d happily sell it b/c he hated having to work there full time in summer, school holidays and a 3 hour shift after school.. He started doing football in the fall and track/field in the spring to have a plausible reason not to have to work after school.
Your vegan bias is showing.
Meat packing plants used to staffed by white Americans in farm country. Nowadays, the wages are too low because illegals, who live 4 families to a house and garner a significant income from welfare have taken the jobs.
What kind of work are you willing to do for $4 an hour?
Ready to eat isn’t. Cook your food.
Would listeria be eliminated by cooking? (Serious question).
Yes. It is easily killed by cooking. And note, Listeria does not affect the interior of cuts of meats or other foods, just the surface. So even rinsing chicken will likely remove the bacteria, and then cooking most assuredly, at a temperature of 165F. So the real issue is raw ground meats and sausages, or pate which is processed long after cooking. These are the dangerous ones. These need to be cooked.
And remember to wash one’s hands every time you handle raw flesh, before and after.
It is a very avoidable disease.
Hey, it’s Terrorism.
But our Government would never admit it even if they had proof and confessions.
Can someone explain why the beef was recalled when the ‘contamination’ came from a totally separate poultry plant?