The Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s E. coli investigation of shuttered beef packing co-op Ranchers Beef Ltd. has so far led it to British Columbia, where it’s ordered a recall of six different package types of burgers and chuck.
The recalled products listed by CFIA include boneless chuck steak and ground beef sold at Shoppers Wholesale and Mr. G stores in Prince George in June and July, and four different package types of lean and regular ground beef sold at Buy-Low Foods in Lillooet, west of Kamloops, in mid-August. Click here for CFIA’s list of specific products and dates.
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CFIA announced the recall Saturday. The agency said Friday it was investigating a group of 45 cases of E. coli-related illness this summer in five provinces, including B.C. It said genetic testing of the bacteria was found to have a unique pattern in most of the cases, matching beef samples taken from a “meat facility in Alberta currently not operating.” The illnesses reported included 11 hospitalizations and one death.
Ranchers Beef was opened in 2004 in Balzac, near Calgary, by a farmers’ co-op in a bid to build up domestic, federally-inspected beef slaughter capacity, after the BSE crisis shut the door on exports of Canadian beef to the U.S. and other countries. The company shut its doors and put its plant up for sale in mid-August this year.
CFIA said Saturday that the B.C. recalls were “a result of (its) investigation and traceback conducted on contaminated beef involving Ranchers Beef Ltd.” It added that there have been no reported illnesses linked with the products now being recalled in B.C.
The recall also comes the day after the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) implicated product from Ranchers Beef in one of the biggest beef recalls in U.S. history.
Relying on DNA “fingerprinting” data provided by CFIA, FSIS said it had found the “likely source” of the E. coli 0157:H7 contamination now suspected to have caused illness in up to 40 people in eight states.
That ground beef recall, announced in September, led to the closure Oct. 5 of New Jersey’s Topps Meat Co., then billed as the largest hamburger maker in the country.
FSIS said Friday that Topps had sourced trim from Ranchers Beef for grinding, and that DNA fingerprinting linked the Ranchers Beef product to samples taken from the U.S. patients and from opened beef packages found in their homes.
