A 10 million-pound, nationwide recall of chicken and beef over listeria fears has been expanded by an additional 1.7 million pounds — with federal officials citing possible contamination of meat that was delivered to school cafeterias.
To make matters worse, the late Tuesday notice from the US Department of Agriculture – which raises the size of the recall to a staggering 11.7 million pounds – did not include a list of potentially affected schools.
“A school distribution list is not available at this time,” the USDA said in a statement on its website regarding the recall, which is linked to Oklahoma-based meatpacking giant BrucePac.
A source close to the agency said the recall’s expansion isn’t solely because of the addition of schools. The USDA also has widened the recall’s production window to meat produced as early as May 31, versus a previous start date of June 19, the source said. The window extends to Oct. 8.
A USDA spokesperson said the agency is compiling a list of potentially affected school districts.
The warning leaves parents in the dark as the USDA struggles to respond to a second massive listeria recall within several months.
“The USDA wants to be certain [even if] it scares the public,” James Marsden, a food safety consultant and former advisor to the agency, told The Post.
The expansion of the recall to schools — and the lack of information — may be linked to Durant, Okla.-based BrucePac’s lack of good record keeping, according to Marsden.
“A recall will usually start out small and it will get expanded again and again because the company doesn’t have the records necessary to show that the product should be excluded from the recall,” according to Marsden.
The disclosure of school risks follows confusion last week after the USDA revealed the 10 million-pound recall without specifying which brands and retailers were affected, instead publishing a list of product codes and abbreviations that were difficult if not impossible for shoppers to understand.
This week, The USDA updated the list to clarify that at risk products include frozen dinners and fresh salads from Walmart, Target, Trader Joe’s and big grocery chains including Kroger and Publix, according to US regulators.
Typically, food products that leave a plant have barcodes on their packaging that is supposed to identify on which line the food was produced, the time and date and where it went afterwards, experts said.
The BrucePac recall has not resulted in any known illnesses to date. “But there may be illnesses in multiple states and health departments haven’t connected the epidemiological dots yet,” said food safety lawyer Bill Marler.
Listeria has an incubation period of three to 70 days and it can cause miscarriages even if a pregnant woman has a mild case of listeria, according to food safety experts.
In the BrucePac situation, consumers may have some of the potentially tainted product sitting in their refrigerators and freezers as many of the packaged foods were frozen dinners and readymade salads.
One comforting fact, Marsden pointed out, is that while listeria can survive in frozen foods, the process of heating up the meal will in many cases kill the bacteria.
Meanwhile, the USDA is conducting an internal investigation about its handling of Boar’s Head – which had racked up dozens of inspection report violations over a couple of years – and the Inspector General’s office is conducting an investigation of the agency as well, Boar’s Head confirmed on Tuesday.
“The USDA is acting very cautiously,” Marsden said. “They are under a microscope and a lot of pressure to get it right because of Boar’s Head.”
More than seven million pounds of Boar’s Head product was yanked from stores in July after 10 people died and dozens were hospitalized due to listeria in the cold cuts.
