School Meat Supplier Is Shut, Reopens

A Texas meatpacking plant that supplies the national school-lunch program failed a series of salmonella tests and was shut down by the government before a judge allowed it to reopen, a decision that prompted protests Friday.

The Agriculture Department withdrew its inspectors from the Supreme Beef Processors Inc. plant in Dallas on Tuesday morning because the plant failed to pass new microbial tests for food-borne pathogens. Meat cannot be sold across state lines unless it is federally inspected, so yanking inspectors effectively shuts a plant.

But U.S. District Judge A. Joe Fish in Dallas issued an order later that day requiring the inspectors to return to the plant pending a Dec. 10 hearing.

“This is just unbelievable that a plant that failed so badly is being allowed to operate. We are very troubled by this,” Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said Friday.

The department issued a statement saying it had stopped buying ground beef from the plant as of Tuesday. USDA officials said the plant supplies about 15% of the ground beef that the department purchases annually for schools. Of the 90 million pounds of beef the USDA has purchased since July, 14 million has come from the Dallas facility.

Thomas Billy, administrator of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said he was confident the judge would uphold his agency’s actions against the plant as well as the USDA’s critical pathogen reduction requirements.

Supreme Beef failed the testing on three separate occasions beginning this summer. Under USDA rules, no more than 7.5% of the samples taken in one testing can be positive for salmonella.

The company challenged the testing program’s fairness, calling the standards arbitrary, and it disputed the USDA’s sampling results.

Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumers Federation of America said the USDA was justified in attempting to close the plant.

Although the pathogen is destroyed by cooking, consumers who handle meat contaminated with salmonella risk spreading the pathogen to other foods, she said.

“Why should a company be allowed to have a seal that says ‘USDA inspected’ and approved as wholesome when you know it’s got something in it that causes people to become sick? When people read that seal, they think it’s safe,” she said.

Salmonella kills an estimated 550 people and causes 1.4 million illnesses a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Symptoms include diarrhea, fever, abdominal pain and vomiting.