Disposal of recalled beef taxes school districts

Although it may sound like a trick question, it was a very real issue last week for Lynnelle Grumbles as she and other school food service managers throughout California grappled with the aftermath of the largest beef recall in U.S. history.

Grumbles, food services director at Visalia Unified School District in the San Joaquin Valley, started by calling a food processing plant that could convert the recalled beef from schools in her area into usable material. But officials there didn't want the meat because the company makes feed for chickens that will eventually be consumed by people. She then called two nearby landfills, both of which balked at the thought of the stench. Burning the beef was also out of the question because of the state's air pollution laws.

"It was very frustrating because we spent a lot of time trying to figure out what to do with it," Grumbles said.

She eventually found a landfill an hour and 15 minutes away that agreed to take the beef, which was worth $18,000.

School districts received a memo late last month that instructed them to destroy the recalled beef. Roughly a third of the 143 million pounds of beef recalled went to schools across the nation through the Agriculture Department's National School Lunch program.

School district representatives from across the country are scheduled to testify at a House Education and Labor Committee hearing today. Some representatives were expected to criticize the fragmented way in which schools received information about the recall, said Rachel Racusen, spokeswoman for Rep. George Miller (D-Martinez), the committee's chairman.

The directive said the beef was to be taken to a landfill, incinerated or sent to a rendering plant. A high-ranking official was to follow the beef to where it would be destroyed and document what happened. In addition, two witnesses would have to sign a destruction verification.

School officials said they also were instructed to report their losses and the cost of destroying the beef. But they said it was not clear how or when they would be reimbursed.

For Long Beach Unified, the third largest district in the state, hauling more than 70,000 pounds of meat produced by the now-shuttered Hallmark/Westland plant to landfills turned out to be a weeklong ordeal that cost about $7,000, not including the cost of replacing the beef, said Cecelia Slater, food services director for the district. Slater said she has been fielding calls from many smaller school districts that are frustrated by the process.