The recall, the second largest in U.S. history, highlights the callous disregard for public health and safety by both the government and meatpacking bosses. The meat was contaminated with E. coli, a pathogen that can cause nausea, severe bloody diarrhea, and sometimes death, especially in children, the elderly, and those with compromised immune systems.

The massive recall covered meat produced from April 12 to July 11 at the ConAgra plant. U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) inspectors found E. coli contamination at a hamburger plant supplied by ConAgra June 19. They sat on this information for 10 days while ConAgra continued to churn out the potentially deadly meat. Some 354,000 pounds of meat were recalled June 30. On July 19 the recall was expanded to cover nearly 19 million pounds of beef. By that time, most of the recalled meat had already been eaten. The contaminated meat is dangerous if not fully cooked to 160 degrees.

Five months before the recall, the owner of a Montana meatpacking plant alerted the USDA that he had received contaminated meat from the ConAgra plant in Greeley. The reaction from the government agency was silence, according to John Munsell, owner of Montana Quality Foods & Processing Co.

"They will do everything they can to prevent a confrontation with a big packer," Munsell told the Lincoln, Nebraska, Journal Star. "There is no one in USDA, with the exception of the field personnel, no one in the bureaucracy that has the intestinal fortitude to confront the big packers."

After a recall of 25 million pounds of beef in 1997, the nation’s largest at the time, meat industry owners vigorously opposed legislation to increase the number of inspectors and tighten safety standards in meatpacking plants. The proposed legislation went down to defeat.

Six years ago, the federal government introduced a new regulatory system for meat inspection and safety. The new system, called Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, supposedly introduced a scientific approach in place of what was derisively called the "old sniff and poke" method of inspection. The true impact of the new system was to place the hands-on inspection in the direct control of the meat companies and to remove most government inspectors from the production floor. Contamination rates for salmonella and E. coli both increased from 2000 to 2001.

A draft report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of the U.S. Congress, said that months often pass between when a plant fails contamination tests and when the USDA steps in to investigate the problem. It also said that penalties are often too light to force compliance. For example, when Sara Lee pleaded guilty to selling tainted meat that appears to have caused the deaths of 15 people in 1998, it received a slap on the wrist. The giant food company reached a settlement with federal prosecutors to pay only $4.4 million in penalties. Sales revenue for the company totaled $17.7 billion.  
 
 
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