Restaurant Chain Changes Suppliers After Suspected E. Coli Cases

CHRIS TORRES
Staff Writer

A Pennsylvania-based restaurant chain has temporarily cut ties with its Midwest beef suppliers after five cases of E. coli were traced back to steaks eaten at Hoss’s Steak and Sea House.

A representative from the restaurant chain based in the Altoona area said on the phone Tuesday the company will not process beef at its HFX processing plant until further notice and that it has switched its beef suppliers until it can pinpoint where suspected cuts of E. coli tainted beef came from.

Last Friday, April 20, the company voluntarily recalled 259,230 pounds of beef products from its Hoss’s restaurants as well as stores it contracts to process beef after an investigation by the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) linked five E. coli cases back to the restaurant chain.

Hoss’s operates 49 restaurants in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia.

According to the department of health, five people ate E. coli tainted steaks at four Hoss’s locations in Centre, Dauphin, Venango, and York counties between March 24 and 29. Each person was infected with a potentially deadly strain of E. coli 0157, the same type strain that killed three people and hospitalized hundreds last summer as a result of consuming E. coli-tainted spinach.

The department states each person ate a different cut of steak, but the fact they got it at Hoss’s is the only common link. Four of the five people were hospitalized with symptoms of E. coli, which include severe bloody diarrhea.

Symptoms usually appear five days later and if not treated, can cause severe kidney damage and even death.

Hoss’s stated it would be eliminating three practices it has used to tenderize and flavor its steaks before they arrive at a restaurant: blade tenderization, vacuum marination and marinade injection.

FSIS said the flavor enhancing procedures the company was using may have resulted in E. coli being injected into the meat from the surface of the steaks.
In Hoss’s statement, John Brown, president of HFX, said the injection process is widely used in the meat industry.

E. coli is usually killed at cooking temperatures of 160 degrees Fahrenheit and above. But the steaks were only cooked at rare and medium rare temperatures and the E. coli would have lived through the cooking process, FSIS said.

Bridget Bingham, director of sales growth for Hoss’s, said the company will not get processed beef from its HFX plant in South Claysburg, Pa., and instead is getting beef from U.S. Foodservice and Reinhart Food Service.

Bingham said the company is reviewing safety procedures at the plant in terms of processing beef and is still receiving chicken and salad bar products from the plant. She said the company is looking into other technologies to replace its injection procedures.

As far as where the tainted steaks came from, Bingham said the company is currently working with the USDA to figure that out. She said the company gets its beef products from four to five suppliers, all based in the Midwest.

Bingham said the company, which is known for its wide variety of steaks, is trying to provide a product comparable to what it normally serves, but she admitted frequent customers may notice some differences.

She said the company has not overhauled its safety procedures at restaurants, but is increasing its vigilance. “We’re just tightening everyone’s awareness,” Bingham said.

Beef tainted with harmful E. coli is rare, according to William Henning, professor emeritus of dairy and animal sciences at Penn State. Henning said everyone has harmless E. coli in them that grows in the intestines. Out of 250 known strains of E. coli that scientists believe exist, Henning said only five can actually cause a person harm.

It is even more rare to get E. coli from a steak since it resides on the surface of meat and cooking normally kills it. Undercooked ground beef has been more of a concern because the bacteria can be mixed into the meat in the grinding process.

Henning said the bacteria usually grows in a cow’s hide and through the slaughtering process can transfer onto a cut of beef.

But he said increased scrutiny and better safety procedures have made a person’s chances of getting a potentially harmful bacteria such as E. coli are very small.

Some of the procedures Henning said slaughterhouses use include steaming a carcass to almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit to kill the bacteria and also using organic acids.

There is also a steam vacuum procedure some companies use.

But even the enhanced safety procedures are not foolproof and there is still a chance a person could get sick from a bacteria.

One possible way to eliminate E. coli would be through irradiation, which involves placing cuts of beef under ionizing radiation to kill the bacteria.

He said Wegmans Food Markets, a supermarket chain in the Mid-Atlantic region, sells irradiated beef. Major health institutions around the world have endorsed the practice.

But the process is controversial with some experts disagreeing on how “safe” irradiated food is.

Dr. Samuel Epstein, professor emeritus of environmental medicine at the University of Illinois School of Public Health in Chicago, said in a recent article published by American Grass Fed Beef that the required radiation doses are too high and that tests done on irradiated food in the 1970s by the U.S. Army showed chemicals that increase the chance of getting cancer.