Firm recalls ground beef wrongly labeled as irradiated

Robert Roos

Dec 2, 2003 (CIDRAP News) In what appears to be the first case of its kind, a meatpacking plant in Dodge City, Kan., last week recalled about 26,600 pounds of ground beef because it was wrongly labeled as irradiated.

Excel Corp. recalled the product because it was labeled "irradiated for food safety" but never went to an irradiation plant, according to the company and the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).

"It was a simple clerical error," Mark Klein, Excel's director of communication, told CIDRAP News. "The product was supposed to be routed to an irradiation facility and wasn't. When we noted the issue, we reported it to USDA, being confident that it would fall into the category of a misbranding issue." Excel is based in Wichita, Kan.

The recalled products were produced between Sep 2 and Nov 20 and distributed to retail stores in Minnesota, Iowa, and Wisconsin, the FSIS reported in announcing the recall Nov 26. The recalled products are 1-pound packages labeled "Irradiated for food safety ground beef 93/7, SureBeam" and " Irradiated for food safety ground beef 85/15, SureBeam." The ingredient panel on the package labels lists the establishment number 86K.

The FSIS said it had received no reports of illness associated with the products, and Klein said he was not aware of any. Ground beef is considered safe if cooked according to a USDA-recommended temperature of 160˚F. However, irradiation is believed to provide an extra safety margin so that there is less risk in consuming ground beef that is less thoroughly cooked.

Klein said the mislabeling was discovered when an employee "simply saw that the product was supposed to go to an irradiation facility and wasn't being flagged for that." He said the products were supposed to go to one of two SureBeam irradiation plants in Sioux City, Iowa, and near Chicago.

Klein said he didn't have information on how many food stores or which food chains were affected by the recall or how much product has been returned. The labeling information "would clearly tell consumers whether they had the product or not," he added.

Ron Eustice, executive director of the Minnesota Beef Council and a leading proponent of irradiation for ground beef, said he was not aware of any other cases in which non-irradiated beef was sold as irradiated. Eustice said he doesn't think the episode will hurt sales of irradiated beef. "I think it's been largely unnoticed, the situation's been corrected, I think Cargill [parent company of Excel] handled it well," he said.