The U.S. Department of Agriculture today announced the recall of 143 million pounds of raw and frozen beef from a troubled Chino meat-packing company, deeming it unfit for human consumption because of lapses in required inspections. Agriculture Department officials called this the largest beef recall in the United States, surpassing the ban in 1999 of 35 million pounds of ready-to-eat meat. The USDA said there was ‘a remote probability of adverse health consequences from the use of the product.’ But officials said it is likely that most of the recalled meat, some of which was distributed through federal programs to schools, has already been consumed. The cattle ‘did not receive complete and proper inspection,’ according to a news release issued by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service in Washington, D.C. Information received by the agency shows that Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. ‘did not consistently contact the FSIS public health veterinarian’ as required when cattle became nonambulatory after being inspected, the release said. Department spokesman Keith Williams noted that today’s beef recall, while the largest in history, was not based on the same levels of concern for public health as in some prior recalls. ‘There […]