beef+recall

Beef recall hit 16 area districts By STEPHANIE FARR Philadelphia Daily News _farrs@phillynews.com_ (mailto:farrs@phillynews.com) 215-854-4225 Haverford Township School District's food-service director picked a heck of a week to take a vacation. The nationwide beef recall has left 196 school districts in the state, including Haverford's, scrambling. Fifteen suburban school districts, as well as Philadelphia's, have received recalled meat from the National School Lunch Program, according to the state Department of Agriculture, which administers the federal program.

But local suburban school officials say there is little to worry about since the recall - the largest of its kind, according to state Department of Agriculture spokesman Chris Ryder - is a precautionary measure. "I think the most important thing is this recall is not due to damaged or harmful product; it's due to the inhumane treatment of animals," said Barbara Nissel, food-service consultant for the Rose Tree Media School District in Delaware County.

Ryder said the U.S. Department of Agriculture had deemed the recall a "Class II," which means there's an "extremely low probability" of anyone getting sick from the meat. "There's no evidence there's a human health risk associated with this," he said. "The recall is because the rules weren't followed, which meant the safeguards were no longer in place."

The 143 million pounds of recalled beef came from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. of California. The Humane Society of the United States filmed workers there forcing sick cows into a slaughter line allegedly without first having those cows inspected to ensure that they were disease-free.

The recall spans from February 2006 to this month, which means that a majority of the product already has been consumed, Nissel said. According to Ryder, schools received notification to put the beef on "administrative hold" at the beginning of February. The hold tells schools to not serve the product but not to get rid of it either, while the situation is investigated.

On Feb. 6, officials at Rose Tree Media School District complied, said Mary Beth Lauer, school spokeswoman. But with the food-service director on vacation this week, they didn't learn about the official recall until yesterday. "That e-mail said it was not just to be set aside, but it was to never be used," Lauer said. "But we had removed all beef from the beginning, whether it came from this group or not. We removed it all. We're eating a lot of chicken cheesesteaks and chicken patties now."

Nissel said Rose Tree has other beef from open-market sources but hasn't decided whether to continue serving it. "We know that product is safe, but perception-wise, we haven't made the decision whether it will be served," she said. Pamela Bittle, spokeswoman for the William Penn School District, another Delaware County district on the recall list, said the district's processor told officials that none of the beef products received by the district were part of the recall. The district continues to serve beef, because "hamburgers are a daily part of our lunch menu," Bittle said.

All three district officials said they have not received any concerned calls from parents or any students complaining of illness. But one Philadelphia activist says it points to a wider issue. "This issue of the food services and the school-lunch program is not just about tainted meat but providing healthy, local, organically-grown food options," Aissia Richardson, of Parents United for Public Education, said. "It's not just this one issue, it's broader."

Area school districts affected by the beef recall, according to the state Department of Agriculture:
 * Abington (Montgomery County)
 * Bensa