50M Lbs. Of Recalled Beef Went To Schools

More than a third of the 143 million pounds of California beef recalled last week went to school lunch programs, with at least 20 million pounds consumed, officials with the U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday.

About 50 million pounds of the meat went to schools, said Eric Steiner, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service's special nutrition programs.

Of that amount, about 20 million pounds have been eaten, 15 million pounds are on hold at storage facilities and 15 million pounds are still being traced, he said.

Officials said, however, that they still weren't able to provide the names of all the places the meat wound up.

"Sitting here today, I cannot tell you how many locations the product has gone to," said Dr. Kenneth Peterson, of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. "Our focus is identifying the locations and making sure the product is under control."

The USDA shut down Chino-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Co. and issued the nation's largest beef recall after the Humane Society of the United States released undercover video of workers kicking and shoving sick and crippled cows and forcing them to stand with electric prods, forklifts and water hoses.

The plant produces about a fifth of all the meat in the federal school lunch programs, said Bill Sessions, associate deputy administrator for livestock and seed Programs with USDA's agriculture marketing service.

One of the workers accused of abusing the debilitated cattle in the video, Luis Sanchez, turned himself in to Chino police on Wednesday, San Bernardino County prosecutors said Thursday.

Luis Sanchez pleaded not guilty Thursday in San Bernardino County Superior Court's Chino courthouse to three misdemeanors involving illegal movement of sick or injured cattle. He was scheduled for a Feb. 28 pretrial hearing and remained in custody in lieu of $15,000 bail, Deputy District Attorney Debbie Ploghaus said.

A county public defender was expected to represent Sanchez, Ploghaus said. A message left Thursday with the public defender's office was not immediately returned. No phone listing was available for Sanchez.

Worker Daniel Ugarte Navarro, 49, was taken into custody Saturday at his Pomona home and released Sunday on $7,500 bail. He has pleaded not guilty to five felony counts of animal abuse in addition to three misdemeanors.

A message left at a number listed under D. Navarro Thursday was not immediately returned.

Critics Say USDA Shortages Threaten Safety

Government inspectors responsible for examining slaughterhouse cattle for mad cow disease and other ills are sometimes so short-staffed that they find themselves peering down from catwalks at hundreds of animals at once, looking for such telltale signs as droopy ears, stumbling gait and facial paralysis.

The ranks of inspectors are so thin that slaughterhouse workers often figure out when "surprise" visits are about to take place, and make sure they are on their best behavior.

These allegations were raised by former and current U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors in the wake of the biggest beef recall in history - 143 million pounds from a California meatpacker accused of sending lame "downer" cows to slaughter.

The inspectors told The Associated Press that they fear chronic staff shortages in their ranks are allowing sick cows to get into the nation's food supply, endangering the public. According to USDA's own figures, the inspector ranks nationwide had vacancy rates of 10 percent or more in 2006-07.

"They're not covering all their bases. There's a possibility that something could go through because you don't have the manpower to check everything," said Lester Friedlander, a former USDA veterinary inspector at a plant in Wyalusing, Pa.

Amanda Eamich, a spokeswoman for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, acknowledged that the department has been struggling to fill vacancies but denied the food supply is at risk.

"Every single animal must past antemortem inspection before it's presented for slaughter, so only healthy animals are going to pass," she said. "We do have continuous inspection at slaughter facilities."

Similarly, Janet Riley, a spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute, defended the meatpacking industry's safety record. "It is interesting to keep in mind how heavily regulated we are," she said. "Nobody has this level of inspection."

The current and former inspectors and other industry critics charged that the staff shortages are also resulting in the mistreatment of animals on the way to slaughter, and may have contributed to the recall announced earlier this week.

Industry critics say the staff shortages are compounded by a change in USDA regulations in the late 1990s that gave slaughterhouses more responsibility for devising their own safety checklists and for reporting downer cows to the USDA when inspectors are not present.

That policy places slaughterhouses on an honor system that can lead to abuse in an industry that thrives on close attention to costs, said Stan Painter, chairman for the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, which represents 6,000 inspectors nationwide.

"The fox is guarding its own henhouse," said Painter, who also works as a part-time inspector at hog and poultry packing plants in the South. "If you throw a three-pound chicken away, so what? But if you throw a cow away that's 300 pounds of meat, and you can't get any money out of it, that's a big issue."

Inspectors whose job is to make sure that the cattle are treated humanely said staff shortages mean they are forced to adopt routine hours for their checks, removing the element of surprise.

USDA numbers show anywhere between 10 and 12 percent of inspector and veterinarian positions at poultry, beef and pork slaughterhouses nationwide were vacant between October 2006 and September 2007. In some regions, including Colorado and Texas, a major beef-producing state, the rate hovered around 15 percent. In New York, vacancy rates hit nearly 22 percent last July.

To bolster its ranks, the department is offering big signing bonuses of at least $2,500 to inspectors willing to relocate to 15 states. The agency has 7,800 inspectors covering 6,200 federally inspected establishments, 900 of which slaughter livestock.

USDA's Eamich blamed the vacancies on competition with private-sector wages, high costs of living, and the often-undesirable rural locations of many slaughterhouses.

The agency hired 200 new inspectors in the past year, bringing staffing levels to their highest point since 2003, and cut veterinarian vacancies by half through hiring incentives, the spokeswoman said.