Thursday, August 04, 2011

Cargill recalls 36 million pounds of ground turkey

Cargill is recalling 36 million pounds of ground turkey, following an outbreak of Salmonella that is resistant to multiple antibiotics.  The Cargill website says the source is not yet confirmed, but may be a single plant near Springdale, Arkansas.  Tom Philpott writes, "I have trouble visualizing 36 million pounds of dodgy ground turkey."  Me, too. 

On such occasions, I pull out Google Maps to get a sense of what a production facility on this scale looks like. From the search function, I think this may be it thought this might have been it [but see Update 2].

Update: For more detail on diseases that are resistant to antibiotics (including Salmonella), and their possible connection to animal production methods, see the scientific literature review that was briefly posted to the USDA website and then removed.  I learned of this from the Center for a Livable Future.




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Update 2: My uncle writes from North Carolina to say these images look like a feed plant that supplies the farms. He suggests the following address as a more likely processing plant. I am not sure whether to look on the north or south side of the road, and hope a reader can clarify.


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2 comments:

Sunnyside Dru said...

seems like it would take a plant that size quite a while to produce that much tainted meat..it does not look that big, and from the cars in the lot (and the size of the parking lot) it looks like about 30 employees! Should not be too hard to bleach the entire place out every day..

usfoodpolicy said...

Yes, Sunnyside, it does seem you are correct. Update 2 makes a correction.