First Eggs, Now Meat
By: Stephanie Sobic
Updated: August 24, 2010
On the heels of a nation-wide egg recall, another one has been issued. Only this time it's meat.
"Recalls are almost daily. The reason the public gets more alarmed are these recalls focus on large amounts of products," explains Bob Barr, Food and Service Training Officer for the Ector County Health Department.
At last check, 2,000 people apparently got sick because of the bad eggs, tainted with salmonella. Now there's a meat recall, only this time listeria is the scare. Zemco industries, which is owned by Tyson Foods, voluntarily recalled 380,000 lbs of roast beef and ham.
Zemco spokesperson Gary Mickelson assured Big 2 news “to date, there have been no illnesses reported or associated with any of the affected products.”
Only one store, Walmart, received the recalled deli meats.
According to Mickelson, “the company has been contacted and has instructed its stores to remove the products from shelves and is destroying any remaining products still in its possession.”
In a statement from Walmart, they specify “the recall does not involve individual retail packages of deli meat but does impact marketside grab and go sandwiches including the ham and Swiss sandwich, Italian hero sandwich, roast beef and cheddar sandwich, and smokehouse hero sandwich.”
Barr can only speculate how the meat was contaminated.
"Maybe a mishandling by the employees not washing their hands with products, cross contamination with the processing equipment, the slicers were disinfected properly," says Barr.
Listeria affects elderly people and young kids the most and a person can go anywhere from 3 to 70 days until ever noticing a symptom.
"Symptoms you'd be looking for is vomiting , diarrhea, fever, muscle aches, these types of things are all directly related to listeria and if the individual feels like they need medical attention, by all means go," says Barr.
Listeriosis can be deadly and one of the things Barr stresses is that prevention is key. Things like washing your hands before handling meats and fruits.. Also, eat meats and vegetables as quickly as possible. Because the longer they sit in your refrigerator the better chance you have at getting sick.
