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Default Mad Cow Beef Recall 4 times larger than reported article excerpts

Mad Cow Beef Recall 4 Times Larger Than Reported
38,000 Pounds Targeted In Mad Cow Case; 17,000 May Have Been Eaten
By Phuong Cat Le Seattle Post-Intelligencer 3-3-4

The amount of meat subject to recall from the nation's first case of mad cow
disease was nearly four times larger than previously reported and as much as
17,000 pounds may have been eaten, the U.S. Agriculture Department said.

The beef recall expanded to 38,000 pounds from the initial recall of 10,400
pounds issued Dec. 23, the day a Yakima County Holstein was diagnosed with
bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

Steve Cohen, spokesman with the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said
yesterday that at the time, authorities were more focused on identifying and
contacting outlets that may have received the affected beef than in updating
the amount of beef recalled.

"The total amount was actually less important than identifying the number of
stores and other facilities that received the product simply because the speed
with which the recall was conducted was the most important," Cohen said.

The government did not publicize the new recall figure until Feb. 9, when it
posted the information on its Web site. And the government never released a
list of stores that received potentially contaminated beef, angering consumer
advocates who said the USDA should make that list public.

Cohen said authorities were able to retrieve and destroy about 21,000 pounds of
recalled meat, while the rest, about 17,000 pounds, may have been consumed or
thrown out by consumers.

Federal authorities have also retrieved nearly 4 million pounds of meat and
bone meal -- including tissues and other animal parts -- that were sent to two
Washington rendering facilities to be made into poultry feed or industrial
tallow.

The final batch of that product was buried in state landfills yesterday, said
Charles Breen, Seattle district director for the Food and Drug Administration.

Government authorities have said repeatedly that the beef recall was issued out
of an "abundance of caution" and that the meat posed relatively low risk to
human health.

Humans can develop a similar brain-wasting illness, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob
disease, from consuming infected beef products.

The Dec. 23 recall was set at 10,400 pounds, which included meat from the
infected Holstein and 19 other cows that were slaughtered Dec. 9 at Vern's
Moses Lake Meats.

Vern's shipped the beef to Midway Meats, a deboning processor in Centralia,
which then sent it to two meat processors in Oregon, Willamette Valley Meat Co.
and Interstate Meat Distributors.

Cohen said the affected beef from Vern's was mixed with other meat to create
38,000 pounds of mostly hamburger. It was then shipped to wholesalers and
retailers in Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana and Nevada. More
than 575 businesses handled the meat, he said.

Cohen said the government does not usually reimburse companies for recalls. But
in this case, he said, it would provide some compensation for the cost of
destroying the beef, although he declined to say how much.

The total amount also included about 3,000 pounds of soup bones that were
distributed to restaurants in California, which authorities say were sold or
used before the Dec. 23 recall.

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