Beef Recalls Are At An All-Time High. Is It The Meat Or Is It Us?

LOADING ERROR LOADING Earlier this month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported a multi-state outbreak that linked ground beef to food poisoning from salmonella. Food poisoning ― including from salmonella or E. coli bacteria, the most common pathogens that make consumers sick from beef ― hits over 48 million Americans a year. Inspectors with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service regularly run sample tests for signs of E. coli or salmonella contamination at the slaughtering and bloodletting stage ― and follow up with additional tests if the first set comes back positive. According to the USDA’s latest data, 25.3 billion pounds of beef were produced in 2016, which is 6% higher than the year before. A fact sheet produced by President Donald Trump’s campaign team on Sept. 25, 2016, described the food safety system as “inspection overkill” and called out USDA and FDA regulations as “too strict.” The Trump administration began by proposing to cut $4.7 billion from the USDA’s entire discretionary budget for fiscal year 2018 ― that would have been a 21% drop, the biggest the department has seen since 1988.