In a front page story that appeared in the Sunday edition of The New York Times, reporter Michael Moss reports on the problems facing the beef industry and food stores in keeping beef products, particularly ground beef, free from harmful contamination, like E. Coli.
The story of Stephanie Smith and the medical problems she has suffered as a result of E. Coli contamination from frozen hamburger meat (including kidney failure and paralysis) serve as the backdrop to the issue of how meat is handled at slaughterhouses, processed into ground beef and made into hamburgers and sold to retailers. In describing this process, Moss raises questions about the sources of the ground beef, how it is handled to avoid contamination and if proper inspection of the food products is conducted.
Read the article, and check out the sidebar on the “Anatomy of a hamburger.”
