Food-recall system lacks bite

By Sandi Doughton
Seattle Times staff reporter

	JUSTIN SULLIVAN / GETTY IMAGES A worker monitors a meat grinder at Ray's Wholesale Meats in Yakima. Ray's did not handle meat from the infected cow.
	E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Related stories Loyalty cards plus legwork can track beef buying

When the federal government wants to take a dangerous toy or a faulty food processor off the market, it can order a recall.

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) can't do the same thing with contaminated meat. The agency has no authority to order tainted products off grocery-store shelves. Instead, it relies on voluntary compliance from processors, grocery stores and restaurants.

"You can get a faulty Barbie doll back, but you can't get contaminated meat back," said Carol Tucker Foreman, a former USDA food-safety chief who now works for the Consumer Federation of America.

Foreman and other consumer advocates say the nation's first mad-cow case underscores the government's lack of clout over the meat industry, along with other longstanding flaws in the way food recalls are managed.

The USDA leaves it up to businesses to tell the public when and where contaminated food was sold or served. The agency refuses to name stores and restaurants involved in recalls, saying the information is proprietary. The USDA even kept details from Washington and Oregon health and food-safety officials, because state laws would have opened the information to the public.

"If I was in the state of Washington, I would be absolutely outraged by that," Foreman said. "If it's important enough to get (this meat) off the market, it's important enough to let everybody know where it is."

USDA defends system

USDA officials say the voluntary system is the quickest way to recall meat and get the word out about contaminated products. And it worked well in tracing more than 5 tons of beef from the infected Washington dairy cow and 19 other animals slaughtered in the same group, said Steven Cohen, spokesman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

"We're very confident that all of those outlets that may have received meat know about the recall, informed their customers and have removed and secured the product," he said.

But some local residents say they've had a hard time getting straight answers.

Mark Methvin had already eaten part of a 3-pound tube of ground beef when he realized it was probably part of the recall. He tried to get more information from the USDA and the Kent-area Albertsons where he bought the hamburger.

The grocery store confirmed his suspicions, then put him on hold when he kept asking questions about the recall and the risk of getting sick. He never got through to a real person at the USDA.

Now, the 50-year-old Kent carpenter is anxious and angry.

"The public — we're always the last ones to know," he said.

Methvin's experience illustrates how the recall process forces the public to depend on businesses for information, even though those same companies stand to suffer from bad publicity, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food-safety director for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.

"Consumers are left wondering, and it puts the entire burden on them to track down the information," she said.

Mercer Island attorney Brian Weinstein, who bought a package of lean hamburger at his neighborhood QFC a few days before Christmas, had similar problems getting answers.

On Dec. 23, the day the mad-cow case was announced, QFC assured customers it didn't have any of the meat. The next day, the company acknowledged receiving some of the hamburger.

QFC RECALL DETAILS QFC on Friday released a list of 37 store locations in Washington and Oregon that received recalled hamburger. WASHINGTON Bellevue NE 8th Bellevue 128th SE Bellevue NE 8th, Bldg K1 Bellevue Bellevue Way NE Bellevue 145th Pl SE Bothell Bothell Way NE Bothell Bothell-Everett Hwy Bremerton Kitsap Way Burien 4th Ave SW Enumclaw Monroe St Federal Way Pacific Hwy S Gig Harbor Judson Issaquah Gilman Blvd Issaquah Klahanie Dr SE Kent S.E. 240th Kent Pacific Hwy S Kirkland Park Place Center Kirkland NE 124th St. Lacey Whitman Lane SE Lakewood Bridgeport Way SW Mercer Island S.E. 68th Newcastle Coal Creek Pkwy SE North Bend East Second St Pt. Orchard Village Lane SE Redmond 161st Ave NE Renton NE 4th Seattle 1st Avenue S. Sequim E Washington Av Sumner Parker St E Tacoma 49th Ave NE Vancouver NE 162nd Ave Vancouver SE 192nd Av Woodinville NE Woodinville-Duvall Rd Yelm Algiers OREGON Portland NE Bethany Blvd Portland SE Milwaukee Ave Portland NE 33rd

Weinstein got the bad news about his purchase during a post-holiday visit to the store, when he saw a small sign in the meat department announcing the recall.

"It was so inconspicuous, I barely noticed it," said Weinstein, who had already cooked the burger in a batch of spaghetti sauce and served it to his family, including his three children. "I was shaking when I was reading it."

The next day, a QFC employee told Weinstein it was a mistake — the store hadn't sold any of the recalled beef. It wasn't until he called company headquarters, where an official checked his recent purchases through his frequent-shopper card, that Weinstein got a final answer: Yes, he did buy recalled hamburger.

Though he realizes the health risks are low, Weinstein still feels uneasy about eating meat even remotely linked to a disease that can take decades to develop and is always fatal.

QFC Vice President Jeff Burt said the company reacted swiftly when it learned of the mad-cow case. On the first day, managers believed they didn't have any affected meat. As soon as they discovered the mistake, they took the hamburger off the shelves, he said.

"Our employees were doing the best they could with the limited information we were all receiving," he said.

While major grocery chains quickly pulled ground beef, posted recall notices, and in most cases issued media alerts, the USDA estimates that 500 to 700 stores, restaurants and ethnic markets in six states received the affected meat. All of them at least posted signs to alert customers, Cohen said, but not all issued public statements.

The USDA won't say how many restaurants received the meat or where they're located. The only way consumers can find out if they were exposed while dining out is to call the restaurant or look there for a notice.

'Zero risk' in recalled meat

Most experts believe the risk to anyone who ate the meat is minuscule. The infection seems to concentrate only in the cow's brain and spinal cord, which were removed from the sick Holstein when it was slaughtered. "We feel that this is a zero-risk product," Cohen said.

Many other meat recalls involve bacterial contamination, where speedy action can save lives — and the USDA's tight-lipped policy can be life-threatening, says a 2000 report from the General Accounting Office, Congress' investigative arm.

"Consumers are not routinely informed of the particular restaurants, caterers, or institutions such as hospitals or retirement homes, that may have served recalled foods, even when this information could mean the difference between life and death for high-risk individuals," the report says.

The head of food-safety programs at the Washington State Department of Agriculture said it was frustrating to be left in the dark during the mad-cow recall.

"In the first two weeks, we were inundated with phone calls," said Claudia Coles. "We had other states ... and county health departments calling and asking us: Where's it at? Unfortunately, all we could do is refer them to the USDA."

A handful of states, including California, have agreements that allow them access to USDA recall information, as long as they agree to keep it confidential. While he doesn't like the secrecy, California food and drug chief Jim Waddell said having the information allows state and local health workers to participate in federal recalls and track tainted food more quickly.

Recall investigations hinge on getting distribution lists from meat processors and distributors. Companies don't want competitors to know who their customers are, so they might not cooperate with the voluntary process if they knew the lists would be made public, said the USDA's Cohen.

Laws put USDA at cross-purposes

Recalls work differently at the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which polices everything from baby bath seats to garage-door openers. The commission posts pictures of recalled products on its Web site and sometimes lists specific retail outlets. Most recalls are voluntary, but in about 5 percent, the agency invokes its power to force unwilling companies to comply, said spokesman Scott Wolfson.

The difference, critics say, is the USDA's century-old laws and its dual mission: promoting agricultural products while policing their safety.

Dan Glickman, agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration, tried to get congressional approval for mandatory-recall authority. "If the Consumer Product Safety Commission has this power for defective electronic equipment, it doesn't seem reasonable that the USDA wouldn't have it over defective meat," he said.

But the proposal was always blocked. "The forces within the meat industry fought it," Glickman said.

Leah Wilkinson, director of food policy for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, says there's never been a case where a meat producer refused to cooperate in a recall — a view shared by the USDA.

And though the recalls are voluntary, the agency does wield considerable clout, including the threat of pulling its inspectors from a facility, which would effectively close it down, she said.

Mandatory recalls could actually slow the process with procedural requirements such as subpoenas. "The USDA would have to get its legal ducks in a row before it could initiate anything," Wilkinson said.

While USDA officials say recalls have never been blocked or delayed by uncooperative companies, Foreman says her experience in the agency was different.

"I sat in the room with companies and their lawyers while they dragged their feet and negotiated and did everything they could to slow down the recall process," she said. "Every minute a company can stretch this out, somebody is consuming the product ... and that means it costs them less money."

Methvin, who has always relished a rare hamburger, has maintained his sense of humor despite what he describes as a recent streak of bad luck, culminating with his mad-cow scare. "What I want to know," he said with a laugh, "is who to sue if I start acting like a cow."

What he has lost is his confidence in the USDA stamp of approval on every package of American meat. "I didn't have much faith in my government before this, and I sure don't have much faith in it now."

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company