STILL MORE SILENT RECALLS

Every once in a while I remember to check for meat recalls that have gotten no coverage. Often I find one or two that are limited to one region or are only a few hundred pounds, and I don't bother saying anything about them because it's not suprising I wouldn't have heard about them, and I have no evidence that the communities involved went uninformed. But just as often I find recalls that came and went involving thousands and thousands of pounds of meat, with the comensurate potential to incapacitate or kill hundreds to thousands of people.

Here are just a couple cases in point. Within a couple days, one company in Tennessee, Southeastern Meats, recalled more than four thousand pounds of beef and another company in Texas, Plains Meat Co, recalled more than 13,000 pounds of beef - yes, that's over six tons of beef - and in both cases, of course the culprit was our own war nemesis, E.Coli.

In a break with tradition, the more damning recall was announced by the USDA not on Friday, but on Saturday.