The United States Department of Agriculture ratcheted up the heat on consumer safety issues by issuing a recall of 143 million pounds of beef from Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Company. That organization supplies food distributors, including federal food programs, with ground beef.
As with many recalls, this one seems more about the timing than consumer safety. The USDA dumped this news on the American public during the Sunday of a 3 day holiday weekend. The agency conceded by Monday that "most" of the meat had likely already been eaten and that the meat company had voluntarily ceased operations on February 1.
Consumers don't need a sundial to know that this issue was news at least 16 days ago, and one therefore becomes concerned about the timing and any potential motivation.
Perhaps the worst part of this scare headline is that consumers have no way of knowing if tainted beef is in their freezer. We don't understand why the scare headlines were pushed out more than two weeks after the plant's closure and before a way of identifying retail purchases existed. What we do know is this that is a great tactic that buys everyone some time but still beats the wardrums of consumer safety.
Except in this case, consumers can do nothing to ensure their safety, if a threat even exists, because they can't identify any potentially contaminated food.
When news is made for the apparent sake of making news, one wonders about motivation. Wouldn't an announcement when the company voluntarily ceased operating almost three weeks ago have been appropriate? That's almost a month's worth of possible consumption allowed to go by when the company and the government knew there were potential safety issues.
We'll be addressing the issues surrounding the CPSC and Congressional attempts to legislate safety that seem oddly akin to the economic stimulus package, but for now, we'll just skip the burger for a turkey burger and wait to hear the all clear sign.
By our reckoning, that should be in May, just in time for a nice Memorial Day barbeque.
Labels: ground beef, recall, USDA
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