WASHINGTON — One federal inspector calls it the “E. coli loophole.” Another says, “Nobody would buy it if they knew.” The officials are referring to the little-discussed fact that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has deemed it acceptable for meat companies to cook and sell meat on which E. coli, a bacteria that can sicken and even kill humans, is found during processing.
The “E. coli loophole” affects millions of pounds of beef each year that tests positive for the presence of E. coli O157:H7, a particularly virulent strain of the bacteria.
The agency allows companies to put this E. coli-positive meat in a special category – “cook only.” Cooking the meat, the USDA and producers say, destroys the bacteria and makes it safe to eat as precooked hamburgers, meat loaf, crumbled taco meat and other products.
But some USDA inspectors say the “cook only” practice means that higher-than-appropriate levels of E. coli are tolerated in packing plants, raising the chance that clean meat will become contaminated. They say the “cook only” practice is part of the reason for this year’s sudden rise in incidents of E. coli contamination.
There is no evidence that “cook only” meat has directly sickened consumers. But some inspectors contend that the practice conceals significantly higher levels of E. coli bacteria in packing plants than the companies admit to. That’s because companies that find E. coli are allowed to shift that meat into “cook only” lines, without reporting it to the USDA.
The USDA regularly conducts tests for E. coli in slaughtering plants, but only on meat that packing companies have already deemed free of E. coli, the agency inspectors say. USDA officials say they do not track how much meat is put into “cook only” categories.
“The government keeps putting out that we’ve reduced E. coli by 50 percent and all of that,” said an inspector. “And we haven’t done nothing. We’ve just covered it up.”
The USDA denied this.
