Feds Waited Weeks To Warn On Tainted Meat
Feds waited weeks to warn on tainted meat
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_r...inted_mea.html
BY LEO STANDORA
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, October 5th 2007, 4:00 AM
Bush Administration officials whose job is to protect the nation's food supply waited an 18 days to warn consumers that millions of pounds of ground beef might be contaminated with E.coli bacteria.
They admitted yesterday preliminary tests showed as early as Sept. 7 that frozen hamburger patties from the Elizabeth, N.J.-based Topps Meat Co. showed signs of being tainted.
Twenty-nine people in eight states, including 12-year-old Brianna DiMartini of Staten Island, were sickened after eating meat that was part of a 22 million-pound recall.
U.S. Department of Agriculture officials promised yesterday to speed up future warnings. But they said it was impossible to seek a recall without conducting a more sophisticated test to confirm the original results
"Let me be clear from the beginning, at this point we weren't able to take action based on the initial test," said David Goldman, assistant administrator of the USDA's Office of Public Health Science.
Agriculture officials said the Sept. 7 tests yielded 13 negative samples of the questionable ground beef and just one positive result. USDA scientists then conducted a more sophisticated test that took an additional seven days due to some unexpected glitches.
Those results became available Sept. 14, but the USDA did not act immediately because officials believed the suspect meat had been opened already in consumers' homes, raising the question of whether it had been contaminated there.
