National Steak and Poultry is voluntarily recalling about 248,000 pounds of beef it said might be contaminated with a strain of E. coli bacteria. The company said the meat could be linked to illnesses in six states.
The Owasso-based company and the U.S. Agriculture Department announced the recall on Thursday. National Steak and Poultry says on its Web site the beef products "could potentially be implicated in an outbreak" of illnesses related to E. coli.
The USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service became aware of the problem while investigating a cluster of illnesses and determined there is an association between non-intact steaks — which have been blade tenderized prior to further processing — and illnesses in Colorado, Iowa, Kansas, Michigan, South Dakota and Washington.
There's a simple solution to this problem. Let the cattle eat grass instead of corn and grain, and slow down the goddamn meat processing lines so the workers are less likely to let feces drop into the meat. Problem solved!
But that's too easy. Instead, they're working on a bovine vaccine designed to stop the E. coli O157:H7. Yep. They're going to pump our meat with more chemicals and medications. I can't imagine anything going wrong with that.