41,411,465 Pounds of E. coli Tainted Beef Recalled Since 2007 - That is 165,645,860 Quarter Pounders
Although recalls of beef have fallen off a bit in 2009 (only 571,922 pounds) from 2008 (7,083,399 pounds) and 2007 (33,756,142 pounds) (PDF), 2006 was the best year we had seen awhile - 181,900 pounds.
Of course this does not account for the over 143,000,000 pounds of beef product recalled due to the Hallmark fiasco. Illnesses? Well, we have not yet seen a downturn as we had hoped. Let's hope the rest of 2009 has no more recalls and no more illnesses.
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The very low poundage of beef recalled for E coli in 2006, and the very low number of recalls, also had no outbreaks or human illness related to the recalls. The pound have not only increased for E coli recalls, but also the number or recalls linked to illnesses have increased. We have to stop saying that because positive tests for E coli in ground beef are down 40 percent from 1999 everything is OK