Meat Recalls Point to Possibility Threat is Growing

I guess we can no longer depend on the government to protect us, especially under this president:

Last week's recall of 21.7 million pounds of frozen hamburger because of potential E. coli contamination is bound to fuel concern that E. coli outbreaks may be on the rise in the USA's meat industry for the first time this decade.

The ground beef recall by Topps Meat is second in size only to Hudson Foods' 1997 recall of 25 million pounds of ground beef. And it comes just three months after a recall of 5.7 million pounds of ground beef tied to E. coli. The Topps recall has been linked to 27 reported illnesses, three confirmed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.

[...]The USDA sample-tests about 8,000 products a year for the deadly E. coli O157:H7 strain identified in the Topps recall. The rate of positive tests has shrunk about 73% since 2000 but trended up in 2007 compared with the past three years.

Huffman says the rise could simply be a "random event." But Bill Marler, the nation's leading E. coli plaintiff's attorney, says, "Something has changed, and it has not changed for the better."