USDA blames Canadian firm for E. coli outbreak
An expanded recall on September 29 of 21.7 million tons of beef resulted in the bankruptcy a week later of 67-year-old Topps Meat, the largest U.S. maker of frozen beef patties. Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said the contagion was likely caused by beef from Ranchers Beef Ltd of Balzac, Alberta, Canada, a company that had ceased operation citing insolvency just a month before.
Nearly 100 people in the U.S. and Canada were sickened by the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak, while the recall itself was the second largest in U.S. history.
The chain of events illustrates–with considerable irony–the problems inherent in establishing a farmer’s cooperative under a food distribution system that consolidates control by increasingly centralized producers, processors and distributors within a framework in which adequate inspection and food safety are frequently brushed aside.
The irony is that Ranchers Beef was a new co-op formed by ranchers attempting to overcome exploitation at the hands of centralized packing houses by marketing their own beef.
According to an article run by the Canadian National Post on August 22, just a week after the 14-month-old co-op closed, Ranchers Beef was “christened the Cadillac of food safety in a post-mad-cow era, capable of tracking each bovine as it journeyed from the truck, through the plant, to its end in a box of beef.” One investor claimed that Ranchers Beef was “the only plant eligible to ship to Europe” in all of North America.
The U. S. Food Safety and Inspection Service delisted Ranchers Beef as an importer on October 20. U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Richard Raymond said the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) provided pulse field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) patterns—a form of genetic fingerprinting—from Ranchers Beef products that “helped us determine a likely source of contaminated product which led to the September 29 Topps Meat expanded recall.”
Ranchers Beef was not the first Canadian co-op-style meatpacker to close in recent history. In February, Ranchers Choice Beef Co-op Ltd in Dauphin, Manitoba had decided to cease operation under similar financial constraints.
Observers site the U.S. Farm Bill currently working its way through the Senate as a possible mechanism of correcting a food distribution system that increasingly crowds out smaller farmers and ranchers in favor of industrial-style production facilities. While consumers continue paying higher prices for beef and other farm products, smaller farmers and ranchers are under increasing pressure to quit the business, usually by selling out to conglomerates.
That such a large distributor as Topps Meat should be brought down by the recall illustrates yet another irony of the current system: because meat products are intermingled on such a grand scale without prior testing for safety, when a problem does arise, the resulting recall is farm more extensive than it would have been had a smaller batch been distributed on a local level.
What’s more, according to the National Post, Ranchers Beef plans to market premium beef tested for bovine spongioform encephalopathy (BSE), were disallowed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. That a plant designed for preventing and tracking BSE should be blamed for an E. coli outbreak, which is caused by poor sanitary procedures during slaughtering, was just one more painful bit of irony.
[Editor's Note: to see Dan Rather's thought-provoking coverage of the U.S. Farm Bill, click here.]
