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Topps E. coli Outbreak Update

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

In 2007, Topps Meat Company, LLC, recalled 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger patties that health officials had linked to an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak. At least 40 people were sickened, some with a serious complication called hemolytic uremic syndrome.

An Associated Press story highlights some of the problems at the Topps plant that health officials believe may have contributed to the E. coli O157:H7 contamination:

• Beef ground one day was often stored and “reworked” with meat from another production cycle
• A conveyor belt that moved raw patties to packaging was marred by "gouges, cracks and tears"
• [Inspectors] found residue on surfaces that fresh meat came into contact with
• [Topps] cut back on testing for the dangerous pathogen and disregarded sanitary issues
• Federal food inspectors overlooked crucial evidence that Topps used risky processing procedures and operated under a flawed food safety plan

Kenneth Petersen, head of the national Office of Field Operations for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), was sited by the Associated Press as saying, "Clearly, something was missed at Topps" and that Topps became “complacent.”

If Topps had adequately tested its ground beef, the outbreak may have been prevented:

Topps did not require that every batch of meat received from slaughterhouses be certified to be free of E. coli, inspection documents show.

Suppliers don't always test certain cuts, such as steaks and roasts, where any bacteria would usually be on the exterior and could be readily killed by cooking. But when Topps ground such "intact" cuts, any bacteria present was mixed into patties, where interior temperatures of 160 degrees during cooking would be needed to kill it.

"They were doing that trimming and putting it into their ground mixture, but not doing any testing on it themselves to determine if it had E. coli," said Petersen. "That was another avenue for potential contamination."

In a separate interview, Petersen said Topps had decreased end-of-line testing for E. coli from monthly to three times a year. "Somewhere, I don't know if lazy is the right word, but they got complacent," he said.

Topps filed for bankruptcy and went out of business. Anyone who contracted E. coli in the outbreak linked to Topps ground beef patties should contact our law firm about compensation from insurance payouts.

Read our earlier post regarding the FSIS tele-news conference discussing the Topps E. coli outbreak.

Resource: Jeffery Gold, “USDA papers: Burger recall followed riskier procedures,” Associated Press, June 8, 2008.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on June 09, 2008 (boomark / email).