Vol. 71/No. 45      December 3, 2007

Topps closed its doors after the recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen meat found to be contaminated with E. coli bacteria. It was the second-largest U.S. beef recall.

The company waited at least 11 days from the time the first E. coli case was reported until it began the nationwide recall, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) acknowledged at a news conference. The Associated Press reported that 40 people in eight states became sick with E. coli infections from meat processed by Topps.

Two years ago, an eight-year-old girl in upstate New York became sick from Topps meat. The USDA now confirms that instead of increasing its tests, the company cut testing on its finished ground beef from once a month to only three times a year. In addition, it sometimes mixed tested and untested meat in its grinding machines. USDA inspectors, who were in the plant for only an hour or two every day, never once cited Topps for any violations.

Five days before Topps closed down, Richard Raymond, the USDA’s undersecretary of food safety, declared on a CBS-TV program, “The American meat supply is the safest in the world.”

The day after Topps went out of business, the Sam’s Club warehouse chain took ground beef patties produced by Cargill off its shelves, after four children in Minnesota were reported to fall ill from E. coli bacteria. Cargill recalled more than 840,000 pounds of frozen patties produced at its plant in Butler, Wisconsin.

Some meat plants sterilize carcasses with steam; others test meat once an hour, but many have not adopted even these feeble measures because the owners consider them too expensive.

According to government estimates, up to 73,000 U.S. residents a year are sickened with E. coli.

In 2002 the USDA issued more controls for the meat industry after incidents of bacteria-contaminated meat. “We’re beginning to feel that the 2002 guidelines have not been enacted to the maximum,” USDA spokesman Raymond said in a recent New York Times interview.

The government’s response now, after the meat recalls at Topps and Cargill, is simply to conduct surveys of meat plants on what they are doing to tackle the E. coli problem. USDA officials also announced plans to send “special assessment teams” into plants they determine are “lagging” in safety enforcement, the Times reported October 23.

In discussing the reasons for the safety problems in the meat industry, government officials omit mention of the drive to speed up production and other brutal job conditions faced by workers at Topps and elsewhere in the meat industry.

Two years ago this reporter applied for a job at Topps, and was told by management that 14-hour days were the norm.

Alberto Narvaelzi, a supervisor at Topps for 23 years, gave a small glimpse of the work conditions there. “The whole [last] year, there was a lot more pressure” by the company to crank up production, he told the Times.  
 
 
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