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Recalled beef buried six feet under

Jody Lawrence-Turner
Staff writer
February 23, 2008

A frontend loader pushes 26,000 pounds of meat belonging to the Central Valley, East Valley, Cheney, Mead and Nine Mile Falls school districts into the North Side Landfill on Feb. 22, 2008, in Spokane. The meat is part of a 143 million pound recall by the USDA of frozen beef from a California slaughter house and packing plant because of concerns it may be tainted. (DAN PELLE The Spokesman-Review)

Recalled beef pulled from Spokane-area school cafeterias is now buried six feet under.

Health officials decided against incinerating the potentially tainted beef. The quickest and simplest way to dispose of the 50,000 pounds of meat linked to the nation’s largest-ever beef recall, they said, was to dump it at Spokane’s North Side Landfill.

Burying it will ensure it isn’t retrieved by humans, or animals such as coyotes, officials said. It should also prevent odor as the meat rots, they said.

“We’re obligated to make sure the meat is properly disposed of,” said Mike LaScuola, a technical advisor of environmental health for the Spokane Regional Health District. “Anytime there’s a recall on food, we have to make sure it doesn’t get back into the market.”

The dumping site is “a monitored landfill, and it qualified as a good location to have this huge quantity of material disposed of,” LaScuola said.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s decision to recall 143 million pounds of frozen beef from California-based Westland/Hallmark Meat Packing Co. was announced Sunday.

About 37 million pounds of the recalled meat, including ground beef, hamburger patties and prepared foods like rib-shaped cuts, had been purchased by the federal government and distributed to schools and other agencies who participate in the National School Lunch Program.

“It’s hard to believe this is all happening because of a video,” said Scott Windsor, Solid Waste Management director.

That video, released by the Humane Society of the United States after an undercover investigation, shows workers using fork lifts, electrical prods and water hoses to roust animals that were too weak to walk to slaughter. Federal regulations prohibit the slaughter of animals too sick to stand on their own – commonly known as downer cows – because of the risk they pose to the human food supply.

The USDA has called the recall a precaution, saying most of the meat was likely eaten long ago.

School districts have until Monday to pull from their supplies any meat associated with the California plant that they had received during 2007. They’ve also been warned not to use meat received from the plant in 2006.

Incinerating wasn’t possible because the frozen beef was too hard to mix with the wood and paper products necessary to burn it, said Scott Windsor, Solid Waste Management director. And even if it was burned, officials couldn’t be certain it was destroyed, Windsor said.

Letting the meat thaw so it would be easier to burn wasn’t an option because the city’s waste management facility didn’t have enough room to store the cases of beef, officials said.

So more than 2,528 cases of meat were pushed into a hole Friday. The boxes were packed down into the earth and buried under soil, waste management officials said.

That process was witnessed and certified by Mike LaScuola, a technical advisor of environmental health for the Spokane Regional Health District, as required under conditions of the recall.

“We’re obligated to make sure the meat is properly disposed of,” LaScuola said. “Anytime there’s a recall on food, we have to make sure it doesn’t get back into the market.”

Most of the beef was stored at Empire Cold Storage. A 40-foot flatbed trailer was loaded there twice Friday, each time hauling away more than 20,000 pounds of beef headed for the landfill. Smaller trucks were filled as well.

Some school districts filled smaller trucks and dumped them at the landfill Friday. By mid-afternoon, all affected districts had gotten rid of the potentially tainted beef.

The dumping site is a 15-acre parcel that is a designated as a backup landfill for the waste-to-energy plant. It is part of Spokane’s 345-acre North Side Landfill, which was closed to the public and capped in December 1991.

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