Topps Meat to call it quits in wake of beef recall

Posted Oct 5th 2007 3:45PM by Michael Fowlkes
Filed under: Bad News, Products and Services, Consumer Experience, Scandals

Six days after issuing America's second ever largest beef recall, Topps Meat Co. announced today that the company is going to be going out of business. The amount of beef that was eventually involved in this recall totaled some 21.7 million pounds of the company's ground beef.

The company, which had been in business for the past 67 years expressed regret and stated that the event was "tragic for all concerned" and admitted that most of the recalled meat had already been consumed before it was recalled. The total amount of beef that was recalled was equivalent to roughly a year's worth of production.

So far, there have not been any reported deaths from the tainted meat, which has led to 30 reported cases of E coli. The good news is that properly cooking the ground beef was able to prevent the E coli breakout from being much more widespread. The disease is killed in meat that is cooked to an internal temperature of 160 degrees.

Topps Meat, which is the largest maker of frozen hamburger patties in the country sells its products to supermarkets and institutions such as schools, hospitals, restaurants and hotels. In case this is the first time that you are hearing about this, you may want to make sure that you don't have any of this recalled meat sitting in your freezer. You can find a full list of all the recalled meat on the company's website: http://www.toppsmeat.com.

[Photo: bleu_woulfe]

Michael Fowlkes has worked as a stock trader for seven years and spent the last two years working as an analyst for the online investment advisory service Investor's Observer

Tags: beef recall, BeefRecall, inthenews, recalls, Topps Meat, ToppsMeat

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-06-2007 @ 7:55PM

Karen said...

There goes another upstanding American company. Now I suppose is when all the lawsits start-- folks that are too stupid to COOK the meat before they stuff their face with it..and get sick, they will sue the company for millions of dollars...and retire for generations to come. That's what sucks-- o.k pay their doctor bills....but end it there-- don't give them another dime....they can figure out how to buy their burgers like the rest of us folks have to. 67 years in perfect business practices....& VOLUNTEERED to the recall on top of it--to ensure OUR safety. And it put them out of business...that's just sad. Wake up people-- start taking responsibility for your own health & safety-- this lawsuit business is out of hand! So is all the recall stuff happening....so someone gets sick, first find out if it was the company's fault or the consumers fault. I bet in 98% of the case-- it's the consumer. BE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOURSELF!!!!