Meat processors and retailers who produce ground beef are required under a new rule to keep records of the sources of the meat, a step intended to speed up recalls of contaminated food, said the USDA. The Food Safety and Inspection Service said investigations of food-borne illness can be delayed when retailers mix batches of meat while grinding beef.
Al Almanza, deputy USDA undersecretary for food safety, said the new “common sense step … will give us the information we need to act much more effectively to keep families across the country safe.” The agency released a preliminary version of the rule in July 2014.
“Retail stores regularly produce raw ground beef for consumer sales by mixing cuts of beef from various sources,” said the USDA. A salmonella outbreak in Maine and the U.S. Northeast “could have been prevented if establishments had kept records of suppliers on file.” The new rule requires companies to record the names of suppliers, the lot numbers of meat purchased, the names of meat supplied and any material carried over from one production lot to another, dates when ground beef is produced and when the grinding equipment was cleaned. Records also must be kept when beef is ground at a customer’s request using a new batch of meat.