Beef Products

LONDON - A growing food-contamination scandal in Britain widened into a criminal investigation Friday, with consumers worried about finding horse meat in their burgers or lasagna. What began as the discovery of traces of horse meat in uncooked burgers labeled as beef last month escalated this week with the announcement that thousands of packages of frozen beef lasagna were being pulled from supermarket shelves because they were potentially tainted as well. Britain's Food Standards Agency said the Findus company found at least 60% horse meat in 11 of 18 lasagna products that it tested; the meat in at least one of those was entirely horse.

The family of a 4-year-old Hemet girl is suing the Vernon-based maker of recalled ground beef believed to have sickened at least 14 people in April and May, including the girl. Lawrence Fournier and Cynthia Centura say their daughter was hospitalized for three weeks with life-threatening complications of E. coli contamination, including kidney failure, after eating spaghetti sauce made with beef that tested positive for the bacteria.

The beef industry's stampede to introduce low-fat products gained further momentum with the recent debut of SmartMeat, the result of four years of research and millions of dollars in product development. The trademarked process, engineered by Minneapolis-based GFI America, is possibly the most technologically advanced method to enter the lucrative lean-beef sweepstakes.

Pancost Trucking had been profitably hauling about eight refrigerated containers full of beef each week from Colorado to West Coast ports until the mad cow scare led dozens of countries to ban American beef. Now two of the Sterling, Colo.-based company's biggest customers, Tyson Foods Inc. and Excel, a division of Cargill Inc., have all but halted exports, leaving owner Gerry Schaefer scrambling to find other work for his 20 drivers.

About 1.5 million pounds of corned beef were recalled because of possible inedible ingredients, the government said. The recall involves nine companies that bought the meat from a Brazilian supplier. The corned beef is not dangerous, but it may contain beef byproducts that health officials consider inedible, the Department of Agriculture said. Consumers should check the can bottoms for the stamp, "BRASIL INSPECIONADO 3031 S.I.F." Those should be returned to stores for refunds, the USDA said.

Kroger Co., the nation's largest supermarket retailer, on Thursday joined the growing list of companies that have dropped the beef product widely referred to as pink slime from their fresh meat cases. Both Kroger and the Stop & Shop chain said they would no longer sell fresh meat containing the product, known by the industry as lean finely textured beef. On Wednesday, supermarket chains Safeway, Supervalu and Food Lion said they would stop selling fresh meat containing the product because of widespread consumer concerns in the wake of media reports.

This vast ranch used to be filled with grazing herds of cattle, but the green pastures are now overgrown with weeds and dotted with patches where poor farmers grow corn and beans. The cows have vanished. The 32,000-acre El Charcote Ranch in central Venezuela was meant as a showcase for President Hugo Chavez's agrarian revolution, turning a country with food shortages and runaway inflation into one that could feed itself. But since troops and peasants seized the land from a British agribusiness company four years ago, beef production has dropped from 2.6 million pounds annually to zero.

There's another salmonella scare -- this time with ground beef from a Fresno packinghouse. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Thursday that Beef Packers Inc. was recalling more than 800,000 pounds of ground beef products that may be linked to an outbreak of salmonella-caused illnesses. The company is a division of Minneapolis-based agribusiness giant Cargill Inc. The beef was processed between June 5 and June 23 and has "EST. 31913" printed on the case code labels.

General Motors Corp. plans to offer hybrid gasoline-electric engines in up to 1 million of its most popular cars, pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles by 2007 -- with California expected to be the biggest market. The world's largest automaker also is talking to the Pentagon about building tens of thousands more hybrid vehicles, according to sources who have been briefed about the programs.

FRESNO - The first confirmed case of mad cow disease in the U.S. since 2006 surfaced in California's Central Valley on Tuesday, triggering concerns about food safety. But health officials stressed that the diseased animal never entered the human food chain and that U.S. beef and dairy products are safe. The diseased cow "was never presented for slaughter for human consumption, so at no time presented a risk to the food supply or human health," John Clifford, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief veterinarian, said in a statement.