Tainted beef leads to grocery recalls

DODGE CITY, Kan. (AP) — At least three major grocery store chains have recalled some of their ground beef packages because they could be contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

Winn-Dixie Stores Inc., Publix Super Markets Inc. and Kroger Co. announced the recalls mainly in the southeastern U.S. and said they stem from problems at the National Beef Packaging Co. of Dodge City, Kan.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Friday that National Beef was recalling more than 60,000 pounds of beef after the Ohio Department of Agriculture found the bacteria during routine testing.

The recalls affect products sold mainly in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina and Tennessee, but the meat was sent to several distributors and could have been repackaged for consumers and sold nationwide.

The agriculture department says there have been no reports of illnesses. A spokesman for National Beef said the company has never had a problem with E. coli. It is checking processes and procedures in an effort to find the cause and prevent it from happening again, the spokesman said.

E. coli can be deadly and can cause bloody diarrhea, dehydration and other problems. The agriculture department cautioned people to cook ground beef to a temperature of at least 160 degrees. The temperature should be checked with a food thermometer that measures internal temperature, the agency said.

The meat also was distributed to meat packing companies in Detroit and Indianapolis and to Wal-Mart operations in Indiana, Pennsylvania and Wyoming, National Beef said.

At Kroger, the nation's largest traditional grocery store chain, the recalled products include ground chuck, ground beef patties, and meatballs and meat loaf made in the stores. Packages have "sell by" dates of July 29 through Aug. 12. At Publix, the products include meatballs, meat loaf, ground chuck patties, stuffed peppers, seasoned salisbury steak and others with "sell by" dates of July 25 through Aug. 12. Winn-Dixie products include ground chuck and patties with "sell-by" label dates from July 31 to Aug. 12.

The companies said people should return the beef to their stores for a full refund.

912 comments

  • harry
    harry 12 hours ago
    sell By Aug 12 nice to get the word out on Aug 15
  • OutspokenSenior
    OutspokenSenior 7 hours ago
    Can't trust the beef, can't trust the goverment. If only we could grow an organic congress
  • Ann
    Ann 11 hours ago
    ...And yet another reason to buy locally grown meat, milk, milk products and vegatables. Sorry, big massed produced farming, but hormone and pesticide produced products shipped to big processing plants is not paying off. Especially when people are going hungry and tons of food needs to be trashed because of irresponsible practices. Someday, maybe the FDA and government will learn??
  • Cherie
    Cherie 7 hours ago
    Interesting how they tell you after the expiration dates. Most people would have already consumed the meat. Little late don't you think?
  • Tired
    Tired 11 hours ago
    Eating vegtables is any better.They are picked & shipped green. Some are gassed when they are loaded & others are gassed after they are delivered.Either way you are getting vegtables that have color,but aren't ripe. Ask truckers why the call Bananas MONKEY PICKLES. Ask receivers why they keep saying GREEN TOMATOES deon't have color to them. I always thought green was a color,but recievers think it's not a color unless it's called money.They want green tomatoes that have been gassed when loaded so they'll have color (RED) when they recieve them.
  • Ben
    Ben 5 hours ago
    I got sick watching some reality shows...Nobody recalled those.
  • Sherwood O
    Sherwood O 12 hours ago
    I'd like to know how many inspectors are checking more and more food products coming here from China and I mean for human and pet consumption!
  • JAHMON
    JAHMON 7 hours ago
    My first lesson in food safety came in 1984. My German girlfriend and I were visiting her family in Frankfurt. For breakfast, her mother served Pork Tartare. I mentioned that raw pork can kill you, and they laughed and said, "You Americans don't know how to raise livestock. You cram a thousand animals into a small area where they become infected with illness and spread it to each other. THAT is why you get sick." They were right. Food borne ilness very rarely occurs in organic, pastuer-raised animals. The giant food corporations dump an enormous amount of money into lobbying the government to make sure the FDA's rules maximize corporate profits, while preventing small farmers from competeing. Support local farmers and producers and you are putting the screws to big boys.
  • Tammy
    Tammy 9 hours ago
    Lets see if we can get the public thinking.Meat recalls,vegetables,peanut butter anything can become tainted.Whatever happened to Home Economics in school?When I was in school I was taught to cook all foods until DONE not rare,medium rare but DONE.Wash the cutting board after raw meat touched it BEFORE using it for anything else.Commen sense cooking the way momma did will get rid of almost anything tainted or not.E coli,listeria are in most meat sold just at levels seen to be safe by the government.OOOOH OOOOPS they are counting on us to do our part and properly cook it before eating it.Glad no one has got sick or died from this recall but people need to realize that cooking food properly is the best solution.Not the popular one because everyone wants to blame someone else instead of admitting some responsibility. GROW UP LOOK IT UP LEARN!!!
  • d
    d 7 hours ago
    thats why grass fed beef is the way to go
  • Angela
    Angela 8 hours ago
    Rebecca is correct - prisoners are being hired in the chicken processing plant AND the water plant where I work - in a county with 13% unemployment and NO JOBS!
  • Aldoro
    Aldoro 3 hours ago
    FDA eggs, meat, dairy comes from animals fed antibiotics and MONSANTO growth hormones to grow extremely fast in factories. they stand or lie or are crammed together in own wastes for horrifically cruel, painful lives. these factories produce prodigious amounts of contaminated heavy metal antibiotic resistant virus infested pollution that is in our oceans, rivers, lakes, soil SO our veg fruit grains also get virus contamination. consumers of FDA APPROVED meat, eggs, dairy get obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes. documenting and whistle blowing this cruelty in many states will give you a felony and 5 years. where is ALCU? no where to be found.
  • Penny W
    Penny W 6 hours ago
    Who the hell can afford beef these days? You have to sell a kidney to get a roast at my Kroger.
  • HIP 13044
    HIP 13044 16 hours ago
    Watch the documentary "Food, Inc." which explains how e.coli gets into meat. It's time to de-centralize these conglomerates and allow cattle to roam free and feed on grass, not corn.
  • Tamara Perot
    Tamara Perot 9 hours ago
    WHEN WE GRAZED CATTLE ON GRASS AND HAY GROWN NATURALLY WE DIDN'T HAVE THESE PROBLEMS.NOW WE INJECT THE CATTLE WITH GROTH HORMONES WE PUT ALL KINDS OF CHEMICAL INTO THE CATTLE FEED AND ALOT OF FEED COMPANIES EVEN MIX MANURE WITH FEED AND PACKAGE IT FOR SALE,ANY WONDER WHY WE HAVE SO MANY CASES OF TAINTED FOOD NOW DAYS,NOT ONLY MEATS BUT VEGGIES ALSO,CAUSE THEY USE THE COW MANURE FOR FURTILIZER AND SPRAY DOZENS OF CHEMICALS ON THEM ALSO.SO I GUESS ONLY WAY TO GET AWAY FROM THE NEW WORLD ORDER AND IT'S AGENDA OF DEPOPULATION OF THE WORLD IS TO GROW AND RAISE UR OWN FOOD.AND ONLY BUY STUFF U CAN'T RAISE OR GROW LIKE SUGAR AND SALT ETC,ETC.REMEMBER 1 OF THE WAY THEY PLANNED ON DEPOPULATION IS BY STARVATION
  • artspeak 62
    artspeak 62 about an hour ago
    Now when we start down the deficit reduction road, is this one of the functions of "big brother" government that is going to get axed? Then who will watch over domestic and foreign food products? Do we let them police themselves, like the banking industry does? Boy, living in America is going to get real exciting in the near future!
  • DaughterofFenrir
    DaughterofFenrir 3 hours ago
    Funny, scientists know that if you grass-feed beef E.Coli will reduce by 85%. It's not like we can trust the companies or our government to do anything about it though. The FDA is full of people either in-bed with these companies or are former employees to let them get by.
  • Fish tacos and a funky dog
    Fish tacos and a funky do ... 11 hours ago
    This is not the first time for the Dodge plant, maybe its time to set up more strict testing for proccessed foods.
  • Spanky the Bear
    Spanky the Bear 9 hours ago
    Cows are supposed to eat GRASS. Not CORN.
    They get sick from eating corn and have to be injected with antibiotics to keep them alive as they stand in their own poo. Mass produced food is a joke, and the joke is on us.
  • dreameyezzzz
    dreameyezzzz 12 hours ago
    The FDA is getting paid off to look the other way!!!