Schools in Elyria, North Ridgeville and Amherst all received beef products that are part of the biggest meat recall in U.S. history, but it was never served to students, officials said.

Food service directors and other officials stressed that all of the recalled meat they received is being kept separated from safe food supplies and held until it is tested and disposed of.

In Elyria, the school district’s food service personnel conducted an inventory of food stocks and found one case of beef, 11 cases of taco filling and four cases of Salisbury steak that were part of the recall, spokeswoman Amy Kren said.

“We were told that there is a remote probability of adverse health effects,” said Kren.

In North Ridgeville, five cases of taco meat and two cases of Salisbury steak were found and withdrawn from circulation, said Peggy Adamic, the district’s director of food services.

“The important thing to stress is that nobody got sick,” Adamic said. “We’re pulling it because the meat processing company did not comply with what is considered safe food processing standards.”

The U.S. Department of Agriculture ordered the recall Sunday, while it investigates California-based slaughterhouse Hallmark/Westland for alleged animal abuse of sick cows, some of whom couldn’t even stand, Adamic said.

It was not yet immediately known what illnesses or other health risks that meat from the ill cows might contain.

The meat received by Elyria came from suppliers that received meat from Westland/Hallmark, which was part of the recall. Although it’s not certain any of the meat came from the embattled slaughterhouse, Kren said “it is possible that some meat from Westland/Hallmark may be in our system.”

“Even though the meat products we found were not (directly) supplied by (Hallmark/Westland), they were included in the recall so we pulled them and notified the USDA,” Kren said.

On Wednesday, nearly 50 food service directors and related personnel from northern Ohio school systems gathered in Twinsburg to learn details of the recall of some 143 million pounds of frozen beef. Testing of all suspected meat products is being done at the state level, Adamic said.

The taco meat, meatballs, a variety of beef patties, and other meat products in question in Amherst were processed and distributed in February 2006, according to Wanda Warford, food services director for the Amherst City Schools.

“It’s been kept frozen in warehouses, and is just now being distributed,” Warford said. “It’s all pre-cooked product, so there should be no chance of E. coli,” said Warford. “In any event, we cook it again to kill any microorganisms. To our knowledge, no one has become sick from this.”

More detailed inspections of food stocks by food service chiefs and cooks were to be conducted today in districts including Elyria and North Ridgeville to make sure no suspect meat was missed

Not every district in the county was affected by the recall. In Oberlin, district Treasurer Diane Wolf, said none of the suspected meat had been located in the district’s food supplies.

Contact Steve Fogarty at 329-7146 or sfogarty@chroniclet.com.

 

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