Tampering Scare Meat to Be Destroyed

Despite finding no contamination, a Milwaukee sausage maker said Tuesday that it would destroy thousands of pounds of packaged meat recalled from groceries recently in a racially motivated product tampering scare.

Fritz Usinger, president of the family-owned Usinger’s sausage empire, said laboratory tests showed no evidence of the rat poison that a controversial black politician claimed might have been injected into the meat by a terrorist group.

The warning, aired by City Council member Michael McGee, has aggravated racial tensions in Wisconsin’s largest city, which is more than 25% black, deeply segregated and afflicted with serious unemployment and educational problems among minorities.

Several prominent white politicians said the tampering threat was a hoax concocted by McGee to get publicity and whip up racial hatred. But black leaders rushed to McGee’s defense, accusing his critics of ignoring social ills.

Last Friday, the City Council voted 11 to 3 to censure McGee for his involvement in the incident.

At a press conference Tuesday, Usinger said his firm had pulled 41,000 packages of bratwurst, wieners, summer sausage and other meat links from Milwaukee area stores following McGee’s disclosure of the alleged terrorist threat on June 22.

According to McGee, he was tipped to the poisoning on the previous day during a phone call from a group he identified as the Militant African Underground Squared, or Mau-Mau. Authorities said they’d never heard of the group.

Samples of the meats were sent to two independent testing labs, both of which found “no evidence to support the threat,” Usinger said. Nevertheless, he said, much of the sausage had to be disposed of because it had exceeded its shelf life by the time the testing was done.

The rest will be destroyed just to be safe, he said.

“Usinger’s feels that while the tests are nearly conclusive, they can never be 100% accurate unless each brat, wiener and sausage is tested,” he added. “That’s impractical.”

Usinger said the recall would cost the company “in excess of $135,000.” A company spokesman said the firm is not insured for such a loss.

McGee, who has previously threatened urban violence against whites, has been embroiled in a longstanding dispute with Usinger’s and several other companies located on a six-block tourist strip in downtown Milwaukee known as Old World Milwaukee Street.

McGee and other activists want the strip renamed after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but merchants claim the name change would be inconvenient and confusing to visitors.

Usinger said Tuesday that he had not altered his opposition to the name change despite the poison scare.