They tell me goat meat is really very tasty…via AP:

Cargill Inc. said Saturday it is recalling more than 1 million pounds of ground beef that may be contaminated with E. coli bacteria, the second time in less than a month it has voluntarily recalled beef that may have been tainted.

No illnesses have been reported, said John Keating, president of Cargill Regional Beef.

The agribusiness giant produced the beef between Oct. 8 and Oct. 11 at a plant in Wyalusing, Pa. and distributed it to retailers across the country. They include Giant, Shop Rite, Stop & Shop, Wegmans and Weis.

Cargill learned the meat may be contaminated after the Agriculture Department found a problem with a sample of the beef produced on Oct. 8, the company said. The bacteria is E. coli O157:H7.

A spokeswoman for Cargill said 10 states are included in the recall — Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

This is the Very Very Bad e. coli, so don’t take a chance on this one.  Read more 

Who amongst us is so gastronomically pure we do not keep a frozen pizza in the house for One Of Those Days? If you have kids is a virtual certainty. And this is not from some Ma & Pa Poodlinski outfit either: General Mills is blaming an “outside supplier” of pepperoni for this recall of Jeno and Totino frozen pizzas. So far 21 cases, with, gulp,

Eight of the cases were reported in Tennessee, with the other cases found in smaller numbers in Kentucky, Missouri, New York, Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Wisconsin and South Dakota.

We can’t get our governor invited to the Great Drought State Conclave, and now this. Tennessee is the Rodney Dangerfield of states. But I digress.

This is evidently one of the nastier varieties of e. coli, with that many that sick. But note the ducking, bobbing and weaving in the phrasing here:  Read more 

Very odd, very small story in Toronto Star I just saw, and post without having time to research further yet.

Loblaws Inc. is recalling No name French Style Green Beans because they may contain a dangerous bacteria.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency says toxins produced by the bacteria (Clostridium) may cause botulism.

The affected product is in 398 millilitre cans, bearing the UPC code 60383 03310, and distributed in Ontario and in western provinces.

The affected cans also bear the following codes:

See link if you’re in or near Ontario. Otherwise just note the following:  Read more 

Along with growing our own food, one of the things us Sensible People do is buy as low on the food chain, corporately speaking, as we can. If you don’t have a bodega, a family-owned grocery, a salvage/scratch’n’dent store that you patronize you still probably know of some in your area.

They need your help. They’re not getting the word about this Castleberry canned-food recall and the situation is worse than we thought. Tonight’s NYT:

Cans of recalled food are bursting, swollen with bacteria that cause botulism.

The bursting cans were among those being held by Castleberry’s Food Co., which last week announced a massive recall that now includes more than 90 potentially contaminated products, including chili sauces and dog foods.

Spot checks by the Food and Drug Administration and state officials are turning up recalled products for sale in convenience stores, gas stations and family-run groceries.

The FDA has found recalled products for sale in roughly 250 of the more than 3,700 stores visited in nationwide checks, according to figures the agency provided to The Associated Press.

Castleberry itself is not all that big a company compared to Hormel or ConAgra. And the stuff they sell—the house brands, the off-label— is the stuff of the poor, the unemployed, the student, the people least likely to be tuned in to the news.  Read more 

So we have two major ground-beef recalls in progress. Both, they tell us, for e. coli contamination. One got a reasonably big, non-hysterical but thorough, coverage on the Saturday evening (NBC anyway) news. That’s this one, which covers a great whacking lot of dead cow over a great number of states. All out West. But one of those no-name meatpackers you never heard of, whose stuff is sold mostly under store brand names.

Unmentioned, oddly enough, was another recall announced just yesterday. That’s this one here. It covers less meat admittedly, but only two companies: Tyson Fresh Meats which processed the stuff, and Wal-Mart which sells it.

Wonder why NBC, when reporting the big Western recall, made no mention of the Eastern, Tyson, Walmart one?  Read more