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USDA Provides List of Schools that Fed Recalled Meat |
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Written by Kiki Hubbard
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Friday, 28 March 2008 |
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USDA is slowly but surely protecting the public interest (emphasis on the slowly).
Yesterday the agency bowed to pressure from federal lawmakers by releasing a 226-page document listing school districts that received beef from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Co., the slaughterhouse responsible for the largest meat recall in U.S. history.
However, the agency refuses to publish a list of all retail stores that received recalled meat from potentially sick cattle, as Envirovore reported not too long ago.
Lawmakers say that making these lists public is a necessary precaution for safeguarding the National School Lunch Program, a major market for Hallmark/Westland beef, as well as the rest of the food supply.
While it's believed that much of the meat had already been consumed at the time of the recall, transparency is at the heart of the current slaughterhouse scandal debate, and consumers deserve to know – even after the fact – which of their favorite brands do business with abusive slaughterhouses that break fundamental food safety policies.
Source: The New York Times
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