Hudson Foods and Officials Indicted in Recall Case
Hudson Foods Inc. and two employees were indicted last week on federal charges of providing false information to the U.S. Department of Agriculture in last year's meat recall. The indictments accuse the Arkansas-based Hudson Foods, Brent Wolke of Columbus and Michael Gregory of Springdale, AK, of falsely representing that the company had been able to link the tainted beef to a single lot, which allowed Hudson to limit the scope of the recall to only three days.
However, the grand jury found that the link did not exist because the production from the day the company said contained the tainted meat had not been sent to Colorado, where the illnesses were initially reported.
The indictment alleges that Wolke and Gregory knew the patties were not sent to Colorado, but they told USDA investigators the link between illnesses had been identified.
If convicted, Gregory and Wolke could be sentenced to up to 5 years in prison and fined up to $250,000. Hudson Foods, in convicted, could be fined up to $500,000.
"If the company had told us the truth, many of these health and safety problems may have been averted before reaching the criminal area," said USDA Inspector General Roger Viadero.
Market Reaction
According to Chuck Levitt, a senior livestock analyst at Alaron Trading Corp. of Chicago, the indictments won't have much affect on demand for beef or the way meat is processed.
``The Hudson story has already been played out on the market. We don't get much reaction from those kind of stories any more.''
There have been some changes in beef processing since the Hudson incident, said Rosemary Mucklow, executive director of the National Meat Institute in Oakland, CA. The practice of reusing meat from a previous day's production has been all but eliminated from the nation's largest plants, she said.
In addition, processing plants that employ more than 500 people implemented the USDA's Hazard Analysis, Critical Control Point program.
The HACCP program requires packers and slaughterhouses to identify each point in the meatpacking process where contamination could occur, such as cutting, grinding and overheating; develop steps to prevent it; and document.
Meat processed at the Hudson plant in Columbus, NE, was linked to an outbreak of E. coli contamination in July 1997 that affected 15 people in Colorado and one in Kentucky. The recall closed the plant, which was later sold to IBP Inc.