Beef Recall
Affects Schools
By Sara Nelson

The beef subject to last weekend’s massive recall made its way across the country and into area schools, including at least one local school that served some of it to students.

Sandy Gilderdale, cafeteria director at Bethel schools, said that she used 20 pounds of the meat in dishes like spaghetti sauce and shepherd’s pie before she received an email from state officials warning not to use the meat, pending the USDA’s investigation into the practices of the California-based company that produced it, Westland/Hallmark.

Last Sunday, the company, whose workers were videotaped cruelly treating and slaughtering cattle that were too sick to stand, issued a recall of its entire beef production for the last two years. Most of the meat has already been consumed, although many schools in Vermont received the meat as recently as January.

Gilderdale said the remainder of the 200-pound shipment she received was still in the freezer, soon to be thrown away. While the USDA will require large shipments of the meat to be sent back, schools that received shipments under a 50-case threshold, including most schools in Vermont, will be allowed to throw the meat away on-site.

The beef was distributed through a USDA program in which schools and some child-care programs are allotted a certain amount of money to spend on a government-approved list of commodity foods, some of them, like the 32-piece boxes of frozen chicken for $1.75, heavily subsidized.

Holly Peake, the state manager of the program, which is administered through the Vermont Department of Children and Families, said that these commodity foods represent about 10-20% of school food budgets.

Peake said the meat recall will impact cafeteria budgets this year, as schools will have to buy more expensive meat from their regular distributors, or change their menus to avoid beef until they can get it through the USDA program again.

"We’re hoping the USDA will send out a replacement shipment or issue credit, but that probably wouldn’t be available until the next school year," she said.

Karen Russo, the cafeteria director at Randolph Elementary School, said she’d only received about 20 pounds of the meat, and hadn’t used it yet. "I have such a small amount, it really won’t affect us financially."

So far, no illnesses have been linked to the meat, and USDA officials said the beef, most of which has already been consumed, poses little or no hazard to consumers.

Peake said she considers the commodity program as a whole to be "fairly safe."

"The food goes through all the same inspections as other food. We’ve had problems once in a while, but overall it’s been pretty good."