Meat recall a non-issue for local school departments

LYNN-Massachusetts Public Schools were not affected by a recent nationwide recall of ground beef and other meat products due to an animal abuse scandal at a California slaughterhouse, the State Office of Health and Human Services announced this week.While school districts across the country were among the recipients of the more than 143 million pounds of beef recalled by the Department of Agriculture last week, Massachusetts officials say there were no direct shipments of Hallmark/Westland meat products to the state’s school lunch program during the two-year period addressed in the recall.Although the state’s lunch program appears to be in the clear, some individual school districts may still be affected by the recall due to lunch program allocations that allow schools to purchase meat products from wholesale processing companies that are not necessarily affiliated with the state program.Lynn School Lunch Program Director Gerry Jones said Thursday that the city school program does not use any meat products that would fall under the recall, but has put a precautionary administrative hold on some items such as pre-made meatballs, crumbled beef and chili meat.”We are clear on that (recall), we don’t use any of the product that there are concerns about,” Jones said. “Most of the recall was on raw ground beef, and none of our suppliers supply us from that company. We do have an administrative request to hold pre-made products as a precaution, and we have removed those products prior to the kids going on vacation.”Wholesale processors produce meat products under private labels, which are different from the labels and descriptions that the USDA provided the public under this recall. According to a press release, the Department of Education is working with a group of five companies, representing seven processors, to determine if those wholesalers have supplied Massachusetts’s school districts with meat products that may have been produced with the recalled meat. To date, all of the companies have responded and supplied state officials with a list of products and product codes, which the Department of Education has reviewed, deeming most school districts safe.”Based on the information given by the USDA, we believe the health risk to Massachusetts residents is very low,” said Director of Environmental Health Suzanne Condon. “We are coordinating closely with the Massachusetts Department of Education to provide schools and districts with the information they need to identify and remove any products connected with this recall.”The Chino, California-based Hallmark/Westland Meat Company has been at the center of an animal cruelty scandal since the United States Humane Society released an undercover tape Jan. 30, which featured workers kicking and moving malnourished cows with a forklift.Aside from humanitarian concerns, the video raised concern for disease because cows that cannot walk, commonly referred to as downer cows, pose an added disease risk, including Mad Cow Disease.The federal government has banned the use of downer cows in the country’s food supply, triggering the recall when the video was released.The Department of Agriculture is treating the recall as a precaution, rather than an emergency reaction, as much of the affected meat has already been consumed with no recorded cases of disease in humans.