Friday, August 6, 2010

ONE MILLION pounds of Beef RECALLED


CLASS I RECALL
FSIS-RC-048-2010 HEALTH RISK: HIGH

Valley Meat Company, a Modesto, Calif. establishment, is recalling approximately one million pounds of frozen ground beef patties and bulk ground beef products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7.

FSIS became aware of the problem on July 15 when the agency was notified by the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) of a small E. coli O157:H7 cluster of illnesses with a rare strain as determined by PFGE subtyping. A total of six patients with illness onset dates between April 8 and June 18, 2010 were reported at that time. After further review, CDPH added another patient from February to the case count, bringing the count to seven. FSIS is continuing to work with the CDPH and the company on the investigation. Anyone with signs or symptoms of foodborne illness should contact a health care provider.

For information on Recall from Valley Meat Co. with full descriptions of products...CLICK HERE.

3 comments:

  1. Thanks, Chef! I am curious.... As an educator, I am interested in preparing my students with a set of effective tools to manage a recall situation at the unit level. Can anyone recommend a trustworty set of best practices for the chef/owner operator that may be impacted by a recall? Thanks!

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  2. Chef,
    I always advise clients to keep copies of their invoice on site for a period of 60days. The problem is that most send them to the accountant or store them off-site. Keeping a copy allows the operator to reference back to purchase dates and vendors. This helps to locate possible inventory when a vendor notifies the restaurant operator of a recall. It is also wise to subscribe to a service that sends out e-mail alerts of new recalls. We offer that to our Followers. Maybe there will be others will send comments with their own methods of control.

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  3. Great tip! So essentially, the chef would use a records retention system similar to protocol used for shellfish identification tags... I believe in the K.I.S.S. principle, so for continuity, I would likely extend my on-site invoice retention to 90 days to match that of the shellfish ID tag. This sample SOP might provide a good starting point: http://sop.nfsmi.org/HACCPBasedSOPs/HandlingaFoodRecall.pdf

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