Retail Store List for Ground Beef E. coli Outbreak
By Kathy Will
Our national food safety law firm Pritzker Olsen Attorneys is compiling a list of retail stores known to have sold beef products recalled in the ground beef E. coli outbreak associated with JBS Swift Beef Co.
The Greeley, Colorado, plant of JBS Swift has recalled 421,000 pounds of beef, much of it destined to be store-packaged ground beef sold on foam trays covered in plastic wrap. The initial recall was nearly a week ago and neither the company nor the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), which regulates the U.S. meat supply, has provided consumers with an accessible list of places where the potentially deadly beef was distributed for retail sale.
Fred Pritzker, president and founder of Pritzker Olsen, has been critical of the omission. “In a day and age when you can track a personal package from your computer, minute-by-minute, you would think five days after a serious recall the public could know where potentially deadly meat ended up,” Pritzker said in a published editorial.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least 23 people in nine states are believed to have been sickened by the outbreak strain of E. coli O157:H7. At least a dozen patients were hospitalized and two suffered a dangerous complication known as HUS, or hemolytic uremic syndrome.
