ANOTHER MASSIVE FRIDAY MEAT RECALL

They keep on doing it, and I keep on pointing out, and so-called journalists keep missing this fantastical coincidence: Whenever the USDA has a particularly large, damning meat recall to announce, it's put out on a Friday, the well-known "dead zone" government officials know ensures the least possible public visibility (meaning, in this case, the least chance lives will be saved or grave illnesses averted by the information). The constant, ongoing willful disregard for public health and American lives in favor of meat industry damage control is a major story that continues under the noses of credulous meat-eating reporters. Hey, folks: Ding-ding-ding-ding! Meat's done!

The latest incident includes obfuscation and flimflammery typical of the USDA's PR stunts on behalf of the beef industry: One recall was dated Thursday, yet note that the first media reports on it - those by outlets closest to the source - occur around midday on Friday, as though all media outlets had the press release for a full day and all decided to wait for someone else to report it. Uh huh. Reeeeeal credible.

At any rate, in combination with the second recall, by Friday night the USDA was recalling over 240,000 pounds of beef. Conceive of this: We're talking more than a hundred tons of contaminated dead cow. That no one heard about.

And even further, the USDA's own recall center puts both of these crucial recall documents on its site in PDF-only form, again limiting how many people can or will instantly access the information - AND although the two recalls are "Class I," which means "a health hazard situation where there is a reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death," the fact that people have already been sickened by the meat in question is finessed with the phrase "discovered by Michigan Department of Community Health as part of an E. coli O157:H7 illness investigation" in one case, and is completely ignored in the other. I guess if nobody hears about these press releases, it doesn't really matter whether they contain that vital part of the story or not, eh?

One last note: This brings the total tonnage to more than 300 tons of beef recalled for E.Coli just within the past three weeks. And remember that I don't make a point of listing every single fecal-contamination meat recall that occurs, only those that are particularly worthy of note such as this one. Ask yourself how many of these you hear about, and why that might be.

FRIDAY BOOKEND

How fitting that the meat-recall scandal that pegged so many of its developments on Friday coverage, and so succeeded in keeping this story - to this day - from the consciousness of most Americans, was wrapped up (at least for not) on a Friday. What a coinkidink, as Micky Dolenz would say.

You may recall (ha!) that "eight people died and more than 50 were sickened in the outbreak, which led to one of the largest meat recalls in U.S. history" - or you may not, since the companies involved, in collusion with the USDA, managed to keep a layer of smoke and mirrors between their obvious involvement and the public, largely via the Friday strategy. Pilgrim's Pride long maintained they had absolutely nothing to do with the people's deaths, that the strain of listeria had not really been tied to their plant, and the USDA did not publicly call them on this until well after any significant media coverage had stopped. Now they've quietly - and that is the operative word - settled. OK, rack 'em up again and let's feed some chicken feces to the next unknowing crowd!

HANG ON, BABY - FRIDAY'S COMIN'

Canada to Detail Mad Cow Investigation on Friday, blares this article, making the point clear in the lede (my emphasis): "Canadian officials will wait until Friday to provide an update on their search for cattle related to the country's second home-grown case of mad cow disease, a senior veterinarian said on Wednesday." Hmmmm. Why's that? "Things are changing day by day, so it becomes a little bit difficult, until the investigation is completed, to be able to come back and say, 'This is what we found'," the vet said. Anybody else find it odd that things are so fluid that they can't stop to say where things are at, yet somehow they know that on Friday they'll be at exactly the right point to provide an update?

Meanwhile: A farm in Alberta - that of Allan Degner - has been identified as the home of Canada's most recent mad cow. And back here at home, in Legislation introduced to keep ban on Canadian cattle, we hear that Representative Earl Pomeroy (D-ND) called the USDA's decision "outrageous," and said it demonstrates that the Agency "cares more about the interests of mega feed lots and processors than the interests of farmers, ranchers, and consumers." And Congressman Ron Kind sent a letter to Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman, blasting the decision to reopen the doors just after the Canadians announced another case of Mad Cow Disease.

THE LATEST FRIDAY RECALL

This one, as they say, is for Friday Recall completists only. But it is a Friday recall of Beef and Chicken Products, recalled this time not for foodborne pathogens but egg whites. Go figure.

YOUR LATEST FRIDAY RECALL

Here's the latest USDA meat recall that you won't hear anything about - and why should you, it's only 34 tons of beef potentially contaminated with deadly E.Coli.

I'm declaring it a Friday recall because even though Reuters says the USDA released the information "late on Thursday," their own story is time-stamped 9:24 a.m. this morning and it's the earliest one I've been able to find (I also checked the AP wires). So yeah, Friday. Excellent work, USDA.

MORE FRIDAY FREAKINESS

Oh. My. God. You are not gonna believe what happened. There was this massive beef recall, see, involving 40,440 pounds of ground beef potentially contaminated with deadly E.Coli, produced by one of America's most famous meat companies and sent to Wal-Marts in 12 states. And here's the thing: Guess what day of the week this recall was announced?

If you said "Friday," you're a regular Meat Facts reader. Pretty freaky coincidence, huh?

And a blogger at Food Consumer reminds us that with seven more E.Coli cases in North Carolina, "in the last six weeks there have been at least six recalls of red meat and nearly 50 people sickened." Not a pretty picture, but the one that accompanies it is certainly cute. Kind of cuts right to the chase, no?

UPDATE: In fairness, there was another recall last week that occurred on a Tuesday... for 140 pounds of listeria-contaminated chicken breast that may have made it to what, five stores? That level of recall seems fine for non-Friday treatment. Hmmm.

ANOTHER ASTONISHING FRIDAY COINCIDENCE

Well, this is getting into Twilight Zone territory, no? By completely random chance, exactly one week after the previous big beef recall was announced on a Friday - when unfortunately and ironically almost no consumers would hear about it - there was yet another beef recall, twice as large as the previous week's, also announced on a Friday!

Maybe Rod Serling or Mr. Spock can explain this, because it sure seems there's something going strangely awry with the laws of probability. Couldn't be because of any human decision-making, of course, because such a decision would clearly put companys' short-term profit over American consumers' lives, and we know that wouldn't happen.

ANOTHER (MILLION-POUND) FRIDAY MEAT RECALL

Sorry, it just occurred to me to check what the USDA was up to last Friday while we were all chatting about Steve Mendell's testimony. You're not going to believe this, but there was yet another Friday recall of 943,000 pounds of poultry with bad giblets. The press release doesn't try very hard to clarify what makes some giblets dangerous and others not, but it does say they're "adulterated" by apparently unwelcome portions of chickens' innards, and it is a CLASS I (HEALTH RISK: HIGH) recall. Too bad no one heard about it, huh?

ANOTHER MASSIVE FRIDAY RECALL

It's been, like, months since we've had an honest-to-God Friday Recall, but it's also been a while since we've had a 20-ton beef recall for E.Coli. The most interesting thing here is the lede in the story from this Iowa paper (rewritten from an AP story): "In an announcement that will have dire consequences for both consumers and producers, an Illinois firm recalled more than 400,000 pounds of beef on Saturday." (My emphasis). But don't be fooled by that last word - USDA says this was in fact a Friday Recall.

One other item of note: "Some of the steaks in the recall were packaged under the Applebee's brand name." Heh. Applebee's. What losers. We made the mistake of going to an Applebee's recently, thinking they'd have A vegetarian option, maybe even, you know, an appetizer, a gardenburger at triple the price, whatever, but no such luck. They lost the entire six-person party due to their utter cluelessness. As far as real veggie options, Mc-Frickin'-Donald's puts their menu to shame. At a restaurant named after APPLES. So when I see this I can't help saying... enjoy your steak, patrons!

UPDATE 8/27: Frank Ybarra, spokesman Applebee's, said the company's best initial estimate "is that only about 80,000 pounds of this involved Applebee's." Ybarra said it was not likely that Applebee's still has any of the suspect meat because "this is the kind of inventory we would burn through pretty quickly." Well, that's reassuring. So only 40 tons of Applebee's meat was potentially contaminated with a deadly pathogen... and was served to, and eaten by, customers. I feel safer already!

ANOTHER MAD COW? ANOTHER FRIDAY

OK, so there's a preliminary test that says there could be another BSE case somewhere in the USA. I'm not going to go crazy about this or anything, because it's certainly very possible it'll wind up being a false positive. What is beyond dispute, however. is that this came out, once again, on a Friday, giving the USDA the maximum lead time to spin this before anyone really gets wind of it. How many Friday afternoon/evening announcements will there be before someone other than me publicly calls the USDA on it?

ANOTHER LISTERIA MYSTERY TWIST

Now this is getting scary: AGAIN on a Friday afternoon, an announcement about this case - Pilgrim's Pride is poised to expand their 300,000-pound recall to... an undisclosed amount. Why undisclosed? Because they're still discussing with the USDA what it should be. A decision is expected - all together now - "late on Friday or early Saturday." So... why put out the story...late on Friday...that this is about to happen? Mysteriouser and mysteriouser...

ANOTHER (HUGE?) FRIDAY RECALL

Here's an interesting Friday recall to add to the massive pile: JSM Meats is recalling beef products for E.Coli. The contaminated beef went to stores in 11 states. It's a Class I (High-Risk) recall.

Now, how much meat is being recalled? The USDA says they don't know. It's an "undetermined" amount.

Excuse me? They don't know? Why not? If I were cynical and jaded through years of following the USDA's machinations to minimize and eliminate the PR damage the meat industry causes itself, I might suspect that there's a large amount of meat involved and though the agency does in fact know how much, they're not saying in the initial story. Why? Because they can let this "undetermined" story work through the news cycle, then "discover" the amount to announce halfway through the next, so it comes only as an added-detail to an existing, "old" news story. It's similar to the ploy, er, sorry, coincidental pattern of behavior, where a recall is announced for a small amount of beef, then expanded a few days later to a huge amount.

Of course, that's only if I were so cynical and jaded as to believe that. But being my own sweet, naive, cockeyed-optimist self, I know the real reason the USDA has no idea how much meat is involved in a recall they're overseeing is that they're simply a bunch of incompetent buffoons. Right?

FRIDAY RECALLS: THE PAYOFF

In February I mentioned the disparity between the hysterical amount of ink plant-food recalls were getting vs. the standard complete silence afforded meat recalls.

So now it's peanut butter with salmonella. You've heard about that, haven't you? But I'm willing to wager that just in the past month, you haven't heard about ... the chicken breast strips with Listeria (26 tons)

Well, turns out I was right, as now detailed in a marketing article about how to play the recall game. "[C]onsumer awareness levels of various recalls, and impacts on brands, vary significantly, according to results of a Harris Interactive survey of 2,563 adults focusing on six recent product recalls," the article says at the outset, and moving to specifics, adds:

For example, only 20% of respondents said they were familiar with this past February's recall of chicken breast cuts and strips caused by Listeria monocytogenes contamination--and among these consumers, only 2% correctly identified Oscar Meyer as one of the brands involved. Under 0.5% correctly identified Louis Rich as the other brand. In fact, 17% named brands other than those involved.

In contrast, 71% of respondents were familiar with the peanut butter recall caused by a Salmonella outbreak, also in February 2007, and 42% correctly identified Peter Pan as the brand involved.

Unfortunately, the article essentially offers warmed-over platitudes rather than drawing out why one recall "succeeds" in generating awareness and another "fails" to do so. Among the helpful tips, "put your press release out on a Friday" and "run a company that shares past and future staff with the agency that's regulating you" - arguably the two most effective strategies for minimizing "damage" from a recall - are conspicuously absent.

IF IT'S FRIDAY...

No one could have predicted it would be at this time of the week that the USDA would choose to announce a recall of three of its employees.

And you gotta love this: Painter said a local union representative told him earlier Friday that a third inspector was also placed on leave, but he could not confirm it with the agency. "Apparently, they found enough evidence to suspend those people," Painter said. "When I asked them why exactly, they said, 'I don't know.' I don't know if I buy that."

LATEST E.COLI RECALL - EIGHT NINE PEOPLE SICKENED

If it's Friday, it must be meat recall time. This one is not for E.Coli that might cause a problem, but already has, and that was distributed throughout the Northwest. But did you hear about it?

UPDATE 9/4: This is an odd one - I'm trying to nail down whether it was a bona fide Friday Recall or a late-Thursday one (which, going into Labor Day weekend, amounts to the same thing) and getting conflicting info. Also, this source I've never heard of pegs the amount of meat recalled at a whopping 41,000 pounds (yes, that's a little over 20 tons of ground beef), but I look to the USDA FSIS page to settle such discrepancies, and here's the oddity - it's not there at all! Did the USDA give everybody in the department the long weekend off? What's going on?

RECALLAPALOOZA

I've been remiss in keeping this up to date over the past month or more, but you know if there's one thing that will force me back into service it's another FRIDAY MEAT RECALL.

And boy oh boy does this ever fit the bill: 367,000 pounds of beef was recalled this past Friday for E.Coli contamination. Yes, that's more than a third of a million pounds, on both the east and west coasts, and in both cases people have already fallen ill with E.Coli poisoning.

Did you hear about it yet? Wonder why?

ONE MORE TIME: WILD ANIMALS DON'T BELONG IN CITIES

I don't quite get why that should be such a controversial notion. They're wild animals. They come from ecosystems where their kind have adapted to live according to certain conditions, climates, foods, etc. Yet we think we can plop them in the middle of cities worldwide without adverse consequences to them or ourselves.

As regular readers may have noticed, I've stopped citing all the little incidents of animals escaping and/or hurting people at zoos, or of zoo negligence causing distress and/or death to zoo residents (except in particularly egregious cases), but it all goes on, of course. And it's all part of a pattern of paternalistic human arrogance - we're so smart, we know what's best for these animals, so it's fine for them to be housed here as our entertainment.

With the addition of severe weather as a by-product of human-induced climate change, the dissonance grows, even when media outlets help paper it over. Check this slide show from the BBC. Photos 6 and 7 have innocuous captions that allow us to enjoy the funny animals. What's not mentioned, and what is part of the original captions, is that in each of these cases extreme measures are being taken in attempts to keep these animals healthy while the weather where their zoo is located would otherwise be devastating to them. That bear with the fish? Here's the caption as filed:

"One of the polar bears at Budapest Zoo catches a fish in her mouth while diving in the pool, after keepers feed them only in the cold water to protect them from the current extreme heat in Budapest, Hungary Friday, July 20, 2007. During this week, central Europe was hit by an extreme heat wave, with temperatures rising over the 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit) mark in many places of Hungary. (AP Photo/Bela Szandelszky)"

and that cute meerkat? Why would it be standing in front of a heat lamp?

"A Meerkat keeps himself warm under a heat lamp in his enclosure at Sydney's Taronga Zoo Friday, July 20, 2007. During a week when Sydney experienced its coldest winter's day in 21 years with temperatures dropping to an arctic negative 0.6 degrees [celsius, I assume - just below 32F] the zoo provided infrared heat lamps for the active little desert dwellers to keep warm. (AP Photo/Mark Baker)"

So far these measures seem to be working - at least we haven't heard the animals complain. But they're symptoms of the big-picture problem.

YET ANOTHER FRIDAY RECALL

Pssssst! Speaking of the venerable tradition of Friday recalls, did you hear that 78 tons of ground beef had been recalled for E.Coli contamination? (That's right, seventy-eight freaking tons of beef - well over the amount the average American consumes in a full year!)

What's that? You say you didn't hear? You didn't get this detailed list of products you're supposed to check for in case you have deadly E.Coli lurking in your fridge? You didn't know to go and carefully examine this PDF-only release from the USDA? OK, then, their system is working perfectly! Carry on.

MAD COW FRIDAY REDUX

They're shameless about it now: "The announcement came at the end of a weeklong tour by veterinary experts from South Korea who inspected U.S. slaughter plants, and as Japan's Food Safety Commission convenes to conduct risk assessments based on U.S. mad cow safeguards." The announcement of what, you ask? Oh, that's right, you may not have heard because the end of the weeklong tour happened to be the end of the week - FRIDAY. Don't worry about it or anything, it's just another potential *cough* Mad Cow.

The sneaky behavior of the USDA on this suggests that this really is Mad Cow, or at least that they're pretty sure it is. This is classic behavior in obfuscating a coming bombshell (remember that the first "actual" Mad Cow was announced a few hours before Christmas Eve), part of the PR strategy to spin it that this is a non-event. And having it released to the press when it won't get covered helps it not be an event.

But in case this is finally confirmed, that won't be enough, so language gets ever more Orwellian: "This is a situation where the firewalls worked. We do not have a human health risk. This animal did not enter the food chain," says Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns. What, didn't anybody have time to brief the incoming USDA chief on the meaning of firewall that they've been using for almost a decade? The firewall was keeping BSE out of the United States, simple as that. Now all of a sudden, the firewalls are inside the system, so sure, there will be Mad Cow in the meat, but it will miraculously be stopped from getting to your plate.

Problem with that is the bottom line: Our trading partners don't care whether Mad Cow gets from the animals to our plate, they care if it's in the animals. And that's why this will continue to be a big deal, whether or not this particular animal is completely confirmed as infected. We've already moved the "firewalls" inside, virtually declaring defeat in the crusade to Keep Mad Cow Out of US Beef. Yeah, that's gonna make US beef an attractive product for export, all right.

USDA + FRIDAY + "MAD COW" = SUSPICIOUS

In another Friday release that mysteriously got swept under the news rug, the USDA has admitted that the "BSE Firewall" does not exist. "There is still a risk, though slight, of mad cow disease in the United States, and it is greatest in the three Northwestern states bordering Canada." Remember when the risk was so small it amounted to "no risk?" How'd we get to particular states with "greatest risk?" Well... "Investigators tracked the animals born in the same herd within a year of the [BSE-]infected cows or born to them, and of those, 29 were shipped to the United States. Investigators were unable to find 11 of those animals; 18 were slaughtered for their meat or killed for other reasons." Interesting that this is coming out now. Are we being softened up for another "discovery?"

UPDATE: Don't know if this answers the previous question, but it's certainly an interesting coincidence: 5/6: Feds probing claims of mad cow violations. Plenty of provovative tidbits, as usual, in this Steve Mitchell story. Some excerpts:

Investigators with the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Inspector General's office are looking into allegations that cow brains and other risky materials that could carry mad cow disease might be entering the human food supply in violation of agency policy, United Press International has learned.

Stanley Painter, chairman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals... said he had been informed other USDA meat inspectors were aware of cases where employees of meatpacking plants failed to ensure specified risk materials or SRMs -- such as brains and spinal cords -- from cows over 30 months old did not enter the nation's food supply.

Painter said OIG investigators told him in March they did not have the non-compliance reports and also were having difficulty obtaining them.

OIG officials have informed Hinchey's [Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-N.Y.] office they interviewed Painter and also are investigating how the USDA handled his complaints, the aide said, and added Hinchey plans to follow up on this matter.

Painter said the agency officials asked him questions that suggested they did not understand USDA policies and implied he should have handled the reports of alleged violations by doing things that would have been a breach of official agency procedures.

Painter said the violations continue to happen and noted he just recently learned of another one. "The potential is there for it to happen all across the country," he said. "It's not just in one location, it's not isolated, because the policy is the same nationwide."