Beef off menus in local school districts

Cafeterias in Seattle elementary schools will serve waffles and scrambled eggs on Tuesday instead of waffles and sausage. For lunch Thursday, mu shu chicken will replace mu shu beef.

To be safe, school officials won't serve any beef until they learn more about the U.S. Department of Agriculture's investigation into allegations that a large supplier of beef to the national school-lunch program used meat from "downer" cows — those that cannot stand or walk.

"We want to err on the side of caution," said district spokesman David Tucker.

Seattle is one of hundreds of school districts in Washington state that were notified Thursday to stop using any beef from Westland Meat of Chino, Calif., until further notice. The state also notified a number of private schools and others that are part of federal food programs.

The concern arose after the release of a video that shows slaughterhouse workers at Hallmark Meat Packing using forklifts to prod or move animals. Westland Meat, which grinds meat, gets meat from Hallmark.

The video, produced by the Humane Society of the United States, raised concerns about animal cruelty and whether meat from "downer" cows is being used in school lunches.

No health problems from Westland meat have been reported. But nonambulatory cows may have a higher risk of being infected with mad-cow disease, E. coli and salmonella, according to the Humane Society.

Hallmark issued a statement Wednesday saying that it had taken immediate action to terminate two employees recorded in the video and has suspended their supervisor.

Along with Seattle, a number of other area districts have stopped serving beef while the USDA investigates. Those include Auburn, Edmonds, Federal Way, Kent and Renton.

In Seattle, the full ban was a way to ensure that no one mistakenly used the wrong box of beef, Tucker said.

The Shoreline School District doesn't think it has any Westland meat, but isn't serving beef until it's sure.

That's a wise course, said Skip Skinner, food-distribution supervisor with the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction.

OSPI is working with the three companies that provide precooked beef to Washington schools to identify which products use meat from Westland, Skinner said.

But he also said that every lot of ground beef that goes into the school-lunch program is inspected twice for E. coli. The USDA decision to place all meat from Westland on hold, he said, is "ultracautious."

Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer has said he is deeply concerned about the allegations, but said it's not clear whether any nonambulatory cows entered the food supply. USDA inspectors visit Hallmark at random times for about 1 ½ hours each day, according to the department.

In Seattle, students may have consumed some of the Westland meat before the USDA notification. But the district was able to determine that the "beef teriyaki dippers" served in elementary schools Thursday were not from Westland, Tucker said.

The Humane Society video was shot in the fall.

In all, about 100 districts in Washington state received raw beef from Westland in November and December. Many other districts, however, buy precooked beef products such as hamburger patties that also may have beef from Westland.

Seattle and many other districts stopped purchasing raw beef after 1993, when some students in the Finley School District in Eastern Washington got sick from undercooked taco meat contaminated with E. coli, said Anita Finch, Seattle's director of nutrition services.

This is the first time Finch can remember any issues with food from the national school-lunch program.

She added that the Centers for Disease Control, in a 2003 report, found that of the 7,390 food-borne illnesses reported nationwide between 1990-99, just 0.5 percent were linked to the federal school-meals program.

The Seattle district works hard to make sure all the food it serves is safe, Finch said. It keeps logs, for example, of food temperature at all stages of preparation.

For now, however, the district has about 1,000 cases of beef that won't be used. About 230 of them — roughly 5,000-6,000 pounds — are known to come from Westland. They are sitting in one part of a large freezer in the district's central kitchen, and are marked "hold."

That is where they'll stay until more is known.

Seattle Times staff reporter Karen Johnson and The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com