You can still have your Whopper made your way at Burger King - but hold the E. coli.
Burger King restaurants along the Wasatch Front quit serving burgers late Thursday afternoon amid a 25-million-pound ground beef recall of Hudson Foods meat that could be tainted with the dangerous bacteria.Although Hudson Foods is one of many Burger King beef suppliers, local franchises decided not to serve any burgers until new meat arrives Friday, said local Burger King manager Frank Buck.
"Sales were still good (Thursday); we sold a lot of chicken and fish," Buck said.
Several customers have applauded Burger King's "play it safe" attitude during this week's national recall, Buck added.
"It looks like Burger King is trying to protect their customers. I'll keep eating there," said Shelly Tippie, Taylorsville. "Besides, I always ask to have my food cooked well-done."
Others are leery.
"I wouldn't eat there," said Lisa Park, Millcreek, adding she quit eating at another Salt Lake restaurant after a recent food safety scare.
Replacement beef shipments were expected to arrive in the Salt Lake area in time for Friday's Burger King lunch crowd.
Recall or no recall, Buck said, he has confidence in the safety of Burger King hamburger.
"We test the meat five times a day to make sure it's at least 160 degrees," he said.
Health officials say the bacteria dies when cooking temperatures are at or above 160 degrees.
Although beef was recalled from some Boston Market restaurants, local stores were not affected because they do not use Hudson beef in their meatloaf, according to a company release.
Boston Market officials added that its meatloaf is cooked at a core temperature of at least 170 degrees.
Meanwhile, operations halted at the Nebraska-based Hudson Foods plant. Thursday's actions were voluntary. But they were likely prompted by an implicit threat from the Agriculture Department that unless the processing and administrative problems at the plant were corrected, the department would force the plant to close by withdrawing food-safety in-spect-ors.
Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said at a news conference Thursday that the latest recall was the largest in U.S. history. Glickman said federal investigators found evidence this week that hamburger patties left over from production June 5 - which showed evidence of the potentially deadly bacteria, E. Coli - were added to production the next day. As a result, the company could not guarantee that any meat produced subsequently would be free of the bacteria, leading the Agriculture Department to press for the recall.
Every year in the United States, bacteria in meat, poultry, seafood, eggs, fruit and vegetables kill as many as 9,000 people, mostly children and elderly people, and sicken millions. So far, Colorado accounts for all 17 cases of E. coli poisoning traced to the Nebraska plant, and all of those people have recovered.
Glickman said: "I believe that the action we are taking today, while tough, is the only option based on the new information our investigators have uncovered. This is a big step, but the evidence indicates we have contained the outbreak."
Because a recall is only voluntary, Glickman said he would ask Congress in the fall to give the Agriculture Department the authority to impose a recall and civil penalties against plants that do not comply with federal regulations.
In any case, supermarkets and restaurants that use or sell ground beef that might have been contaminated with E. coli bacteria removed it Thursday and sought to reassure customers about the safety of their products.
The tainted meat from the Hudson plant is the most prominent case of the E. coli bacteria since four children died and hundreds of other people became ill in 1993 after eating undercooked hamburgers from Jack-in-the-Box outlets in the Northwest.
The Agriculture Department began investigating problems at the Hudson plant after company officials expanded their recall of ground beef to 1.2 million pounds Aug. 15, the largest such recall at that time, from an initial recall of 20,000 pounds three days earlier. Hudson made the first recall after public health officials in Colorado identified the E. coli bacteria in Hudson beef patties in late July and on Aug. 12.
The company's chairman, James Hudson, said in a statement the decisions to expand the recall and close the plant until problems were corrected had been made "out of an abundance of caution to restore the public confidence." Hudson also said the company believed that the source of any contamination had come from the slaughterhouses that supplied the raw, deboned meat and not the plant, where the meat is processed into frozen patties - an assessment with which Agriculture Department officials concurred.