143M lbs. of beef - "Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory"

"non-ambulatory..." ya gotta love it...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Sunday recalled 143 million pounds of frozen beef from a Southern California slaughterhouse that is being investigated for mistreating cattle.

Officials said it was the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing a 1999 ban of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meats.

The federal agency said the recall will affect beef products dating to Feb. 1, 2006, that came from Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co., which supplies meat to the federal school lunch program and to some major fast-food chains.

Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer said his department has evidence that Westland did not routinely contact its veterinarian when cattle became non-ambulatory after passing inspection, violating health regulations.

"Because the cattle did not receive complete and proper inspection, Food Safety and Inspection Service has determined them to be unfit for human food and the company is conducting a recall," Schafer said in a statement.

Federal officials suspended operations at Westland/Hallmark after an undercover video surfaced showing crippled and sick animals being shoved with forklifts.

i also love it when they say that ONE HUNDRED AND FORTY THREE MILLION POUNDS OF BEEF SURPASSES THIRTY FIVE MILLION POUNDS... ya THINK...!

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21.7M pounds of ground beef products recalled

hmmmm... was it only two weeks ago that i posted on the absurd national animal identification system that proposes to implant or attach rfid chips on all animals that can potentially enter the food production chain, and impose reporting requirements so time-consuming and expensive that it would be sure to drive smaller producers out of the market, while at the same time creating massive loopholes for the vertically-integrated corporate giants, all in the name of insuring food safety...? gee. how time flies...

Topps Meat Company LLC has expanded its recall to include 21.7 million pounds (9,800 tonnes) of ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria, the Elizabeth, New Jersey-based company said on Saturday.

golly, ain't it comforting to know they're looking out for us...? oops... well, maybe not...

Products affected by this expanded recall were distributed to retail grocery stores and food service institutions throughout the United States. Based on consumption patterns, Topps said it believes that the vast majority of the recalled product has been consumed.

Over 65 years of quality.

Since 1940, Topps Meat Company has been a leading manufacturer and supplier of premium frozen meat products. At the grocery store, in the restaurant or at the picnic, Topps has always been a sign of great taste and high quality.

Topps Meat Company is a privately owned family company. Headquartered in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Topps expanded its range of product offerings by acquiring Moline, Illinois-based J&B Meats in 2005. For generations, Topps Meat Company and J&B Meats have been major suppliers of high quality products with great taste and value for the consumer, retail and food service venues.

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The next step in government surveillance: implanting mandatory microchips on Bessie and Fido

from jim hightower's hightower lowdown via alternet...

[T]he National Animal Identification System (NAIS) sets up a whole new surveillance program to defend you and yours from a rather odd national security threat: terrorist chickens. And terrorist cows, horses, pigs, sheep, llamas ... and so on. Advanced under the benign guise of protecting public health from outbreaks of animal-borne diseases, this program is intended to tag and track every farm animal in America from birth to death.

It is, to say the least, intrusive. NAIS would compel all owners of such animals to register their premises and personal information in a federal database, to buy microchip devices and attach them to every single one of their animals (each of which gets its very own 15-digit federal ID number), to log and report each and every "event" in the life of each animal, to pay fees for the privilege of having their location and animals registered, and to sit still for fines of up to $1,000 a day for any noncompliance.

but wait... it gets worse... much worse...

If you keep a pony for your kids or board a couple of riding horses, if you've got a few chickens in your backyard, if you've got a potbellied pig or a pet goose, if your youngsters are raising a half-dozen ducks as part of a 4-H club project, if you maintain a buffalo or a goat just for the fun of it -- indeed, if you have any farm animals, NAIS wants you in its computerized grasp.

Every farm, home, horse stable, or other domicile of these animals would have to have its address and precise GPS coordinates filed into the system's central computer, along with the name, phone number, and other personal data of the owner/ renter of the premises. Owners of the animals would have to tag every one of them (luckily, fish ponds are not included!) with an approved tracking mechanism -- most likely by implanting radio-frequency ID chips into them.

[...]

If an entity owns a vertically integrated, birth-to-death factory system with thousands of animals (as the Cargills and Tysons do), it does not have to tag and track each one but instead is given a single lot number to cover the whole flock or herd. Second, it's no accident that NAIS will be so burdensome and costly (fees, tags, computer equipment, time) to small farmers and ranchers. The giant operators are happy to see these pesky competitors saddled with another reason to go out of business, thus leaving even more of the market to the big guys.

typical invasive government nonsense and total overkill to boot... this will do nothing to control animal-borne diseases... a proposal was made several years ago to simply send a dna sample of every animal used in food production to a national registry... that way, should an infection or disease break out, the dna of the infected food could be immediately traced to its source and the entire chain of the production cycle would be totally visible... unfortunately, the giant packing houses solidly oppose traceability, so the proposal died...

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