March 2, 2004 The Seattle Times by Sandi Doughton

When the USDA launched the recall of affected meat Dec. 23, officials put the total at 10,400 pounds, or 5.2 tons, a figure they repeated for nearly two months. But the actual amount was 38,000 pounds, or 19 tons, the agency now acknowledges.

The total swelled because meat from the infected cow was mingled with meat from many other animals when it was ground into hamburger.

Officials at the two Oregon plants that processed and distributed the meat said they knew within a day exactly how much had been sold and where it had gone.

Consumer advocates say the delay in reporting the true amount shows how difficult it is for the public to get timely information about contaminated meat and points up flaws in a recall process they say favors the meat industry over public health.

"I find it frightening," said Elisa Odabashian, senior policy analyst for Consumers Union. "USDA should be telling people how much tainted product is out there and where it is."

USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said the agency didn't update the total because it was more concerned with tracking down the beef. "What's important is how quickly you can remove it, not the final poundage."

And he stressed that the chance anyone who ate the meat will contract the human form of the fatal disease is slight, because the most infectious tissues, including the brain and spinal cord, were removed when the cow was slaughtered.

USDA estimates about half of the meat 21,000 pounds was returned. The rest was either eaten or discarded by consumers. The agency never revealed the grocery stores or restaurants that sold the beef, because that information is considered proprietary. Several grocery chains voluntarily alerted customers, though few identified which specific stores received the contaminated meat. Restaurants generally provided no warning other than a notice posted inside.

Rules on recalls

USDA says the secrecy is necessary to gain cooperation from businesses. Though the federal government can threaten serious sanctions, it has no authority to force businesses to participate in meat recalls. Consumer groups and some members of Congress called for mandatory recall authority soon after the infected cow was discovered, but none of the rules have been changed.

If recalls were mandatory, Odabashian said, USDA might be able to act more quickly, share more information with consumers and penalize companies that don't cooperate.

Jerry Meng, co-owner of Interstate Meat Distributors Inc., in Clackamas, Ore., said his company could have acted faster once the recall was announced, but USDA officials didn't specify until the next day exactly what product was covered. "Once USDA gave us the answer on what meat was involved, actually two to three hours was all it took for us to find out how much and where it was," said Meng, whose company bought much of the affected beef and ground it into hamburger.

Interstate and the other companies caught up in the mad-cow case are also unhappy with government rules that allowed the sick cow to be processed before results from the mad-cow test had come back. Interstate says its financial losses could top $1 million.

"They could have eliminated a lot of grief if the meat was held at the packinghouse," Meng said.

USDA has since changed its rules, putting a mandatory hold on carcasses, pending test results that could take several days.

Interstate and Willamette Valley Meat in Portland, which also bought some of the beef, are both trying to get the government to reimburse them for their losses, which include the cost of buying back beef, disposing of it and lost business. The USDA has offered some money, but not enough, they say.

"It's probably something that is going to end up in court," said Jeff Klein, co-owner of Willamette.

The companies were forced to buy back far more than the 38,000 pounds, as nervous wholesalers and retail stores returned any meat they had purchased from either operation. Interstate got back more than 250,000 pounds of beef, all of which it sent to a landfill.

Still, Meng says his business is rebounding, and he doesn't intend to get into a legal fight with the USDA. "You can't sue the king and win, anyway."

Where the meat went

The original 10,400 pounds of recalled beef came from Vern's Moses Lake Meats Inc., where the infected cow was slaughtered Dec. 9. The batch included the carcasses of 19 other animals killed the same day, with each carcass weighing about 500 pounds.

The carcasses were shipped to Midway Meats in Centralia, where they were deboned. The beef was then sold to Interstate and Willamette for additional processing and distribution.

The meat, including 3,000 pounds of soup bones, wound up in about 580 grocery stores, restaurants and markets, 270 of them in Washington. The rest were scattered across Oregon, California, Idaho, Nevada and Montana.

In the days after the mad-cow discovery, many of Interstate's customers fled, and the company laid off 39 employees, about a third of its work force. A similar scenario played out at Midway Meats and Willamette Valley Meats.

Midway Meats has gone from 50 employees to 15, and is only operating two days a week, said owner Louise Sexsmith.

"I've had product shipped to California and across the U.S., and when it arrives they go: 'Oh, my god, it came from Midway,' and they send it back," she said.

It's particularly frustrating, the owners say, because they didn't do anything wrong.

"The reality of the situation is that this should never have occurred," said Loran Hickton, a Vancouver public-relations consultant for Interstate. "The beef that we received was inspected three times before it got to us."

Usually, USDA doesn't compensate companies involved in recalls. But in this case, Cohen said, the government will pay for the costs of collecting and destroying the recalled meat, but not the other meat returned to the plants.

Sandi Doughton: 206-464-2491 or sdoughton@seattletimes.com