For nearly 20 years I have defended food companies accused of selling products that made people sick. In almost every case, the processor being sued wasn’t the company at fault. Instead, the processor received contaminated trim from its supplier (the harvest facility) and unknowingly used that trim to make ground beef that caused illness. In many cases, the processor was unable to survive the regulatory, media and legal scrutiny and was forced to shutter its doors.
What does that mean for processors today? It is critical to remember that, even if you are doing a stellar job appropriately controlling food safety risk within your own facility, if your trim supplier is having problems, those problems will always become your own.