As part of my duties for Independent Processor and The National Provisioner, I have to look through the news for meat industry-related stories. Sometimes they’re hard to find stories, and sometimes they’re all too easy — for all the wrong reasons.
Last year, one of the stories I had to cover the most was the Rancho Feeding recall, plant closing and subsequent criminal charges. The company issued a recall in early 2014 of almost 9 million pounds of beef after the employees were found to have processed cattle that had cancer eye and were deemed unfit for human consumption. Those cattle were processed without the knowledge of USDA meat inspectors, and the whole case turned into a mess that made the whole industry look bad. Combining “cancer” and “food” in the same story never leads to anything positive.