Recall Reveals Regulatory Gap

The recall of  ground beef by Whole Foods revealed a regulatory gray area whereby it can be legal to sell steaks containing E. coli, but not meat used to make ground beef. The meat recalled last week was ground (at Whole Foods) from so-called "intact cuts," meat typically sold and used for steaks and roasts. Regulators do not monitor these cuts as closely as meat sold for ground beef because they are less likely to make people sick: if a steak is contaminated, the bacteria are most likely on the outside and will be killed during cooking. Not so if those cuts end up in the middle of a rare burger.