ESPN's Outside the Lines recently published the findings of its examination of health department inspection reports for the 107 venues that hosted teams last year in four leagues:  the NFL, MLB, NHL, and the NBA. Thirty of those venues had terribly filthy report cards: Half the vendors in those 30 stadiums and arenas were cited for at least one critical or major violation of the health code.

The Verizon Center, in particular, failed spectacularly. According to ESPN's survey, 100 percent of the vendors at the Chinatown arena had critical health code violations. (Quote from the sidebar: "Mice droppings, a critical violation in Washington, were found at at least 10 vendors.") The concessions at Verizon are run by ARAMARK and Levy Restaurants.

In response to all this bad news, ESPN almost pissed its pants at the thought that someone might get sick from ordering a sliced brisket sandwich from an underpaid, under-trained vendor who'd rather be anywhere than at an arena serving some corporate clodhopper who paid $150 to watch a sporting event. Writes Paula Lavigne, a reporter in ESPN's Enterprise Unit:

While there hasn't been a documented mass outbreak of foodborne illness at a professional sports stadium, fans, players and coaches have said they have fallen ill from food, including Red Sox manager Terry Francona, who blamed bad sushi in the clubhouse for a bout of food poisoning he had before a series playoff game in Anaheim last fall.

Waldrop and other food safety experts said that many cases of food poisoning go unreported. Even when fans do complain, food poisoning — which can hit within hours of eating contaminated food or take days to appear — is hard to prove.

First of all, anyone who orders sushi at the ballpark deserves what he gets. Second, most food-borne illnesses don't hit consumers that quickly, which is one reason why food poisoning is hard to trace. Many assume it was their last meal that caused the discomfort when it could have been an earlier one.

But whatever you think of health inspections — personally, I think diners trust them far too much to determine an eatery's "safety" — they are the best tool we have at present. So I don't discount them altogether, especially when they report systematic failures or note that food is not being held at proper temperatures, which I consider more dangerous than mouse poop lying around. (Hell, if I worried about mouse poop, I'd never eat at home, where we have our own problems with the little critters.)

Will I ever eat food again at the Verizon Center? Of course I will, but I'll follow my usual habit by ordering relatively "safe" foods — like hot dogs which are usually stored in steam drawers or kept warm on rollers. Or just buy a bag of peanuts, which, of course, can have its own problems, but at least they're not tied to arena-specific food handling practices.

So how did other area venues fare?

• At Nationals Park, whose concessions are run by Levy Restaurants, a quarter of the vendors were cited for major or critical health code violations. Reports ESPN: "One location received a critical violation for not having a D.C.-certified food manager's card."
• At FedExField, 36 percent of the vendors were cited for critical violations, including an "employee [who] touched his/her face and then prepared food with his/her hands without washing or changing gloves."
• Baltimore's sports venues, by contrast, fared far better. At M&T Bank Stadium, home of the Ravens, only four percent of the vendors were cited for critical violations, while at Oriole Park at Camden Yards, only 9 percent of the vendors crossed into critical territory.

So there you have it. Go to Baltimore if you want to eat and watch sports. Your odds of dying from the concessions are apparently much smaller.

Photo by izik via Flickr Creative Commons, Attribution License

Following the New York Times' investigation of the ground-beef industry, and the failed safety systems designed to protect the public from its worst practices, Y&H contacted a number of prominent burger operators to get their take on the situation.

It was a chance for them to refute any information, argue that the safety of gourmet ground beef is better than commercial ground beef, and generally try to calm a nervous public, if possible.

First up to respond: Mark Bucher, founder and co-owner of BGR: The Burger Joint. He e-mailed answers to four questions. (Responses edited for punctuation.)

Y&H: What was your overall impression of the Times' piece and what do you think it will mean for ground beef and burger sales in the future?

Bucher: I thought it was extremely well-researched. This certainly wasn't the first time we've seen this happen in the world. Most of it occurs in fast food restaurants, where they struggle each day to produce a burger that can make them a profit at a .99 cent price point. In my opinion, the entire bulk ground beef issue is one borne by a slow economy and chain restaurants forcing suppliers to "reduce costs," because they need the financial model to work for a return on their restaurants. I don't think it will have any impact on the sale of ground beef. Humans love to eat beef; eating a succulent, juicy hamburger is one of the great joys of life.

Y&H: How can you alleviate the fears of diners who worry now that ground beef will be contaminated with E. coli?

Bucher: Truth is, my ground beef is an artisinal product. We don't use any trimmings in our burgers. In the beef world, we use whole muscles, which are ground for us in very small batches each day. As part of our supply agreement, our supplier (which is not a big conglomerate) has our beef constantly tested. Our supplier also happens to prepare cuts of beef for the U.S. military, where food-borne illness can cripple a strike force, and the highest-end steakhouses on the planet. The utmost care and precision is used in evaluating our raw material. Good, fresh, high-quality ground beef is safe to eat in a raw state. We only use the most expensive cuts of beef. This is completely an issue of trimmings and using questionable areas of beef when suppliers are forced to keep the costs down by their customers. I always tell anyone [who] asks, Go to your butcher and have them grind up a brisket for you. It's the best form of ground beef.

Y&H: Where do you source your beef and do you grind the meat yourself or have it ground for you?

Bucher: We source only Prime Beef, which is the top 2% of all beef produced in the U.S. Our beef comes from corn-fed Midwestern farms. The beef is transported to Baltimore for processing at a very small 3rd generation family-owned facility (that actually processes Kosher beef), so their standards are much higher than the USDA's. Our processor only produces burgers for us and for no one else. It's an artisinal process, from start to finish. We test our beef very frequently for bacteria strains.  As recently as last week, we tested our product as part of our normal quality control, and it came back completely 100% perfect.

Y&H: Will you continue to offer rare, medium-rare and other hamburgers that do not reach the USDA-recommended temperature of 160 degrees?

Bucher: Yes, our beef is safe to eat, and our burgers are "gorgeous" at medium-rare. I have no issues or questions about the safety of our ground beef. I am 1000% confident of the source, the muscles used, and the processing techniques.

An extra:  A lot of this is caused by the consumer. High quality costs a bit more. In tough economic times, people and restaurant companies often source for cheaper food alternatives. We hear it all the time: [It's] "not as cheap as___________." We rest at night knowing that our products are the highest quality available handled in precise care by people [who] are vested in our success and truly care.

According to this CNN Money report from last year, Cargill, the manufacturer of the ground beef that partially paralyzed the dance instructor profiled in Sunday's New York Times, is the second largest privately held company in the country. Fortune magazine estimates that Cargill's 2007 revenues were $88 billion. The company's third quarter net earnings in 2008 were more than $1 billion.

And yet according to the Times' story, Cargill, despite its wealth, can't seem to follow its own safety practices, doesn't want to test its suppliers' meat before grinding, and seems to enjoy some measure of protection from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The New York Times published a devastating piece on Sunday, detailing not only how a nasty strain of E. coli ruined the life of a young dance instructor but also how the tainted meat came to be in the first place. The short answer: because the inspection and safety system favors the beef industry, with its need for cost economies and limited liability.

Some of the lowlights from Michael Moss' A-1 story:

• "Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen."

• "Unwritten agreements between some companies appear to stand in the way of ingredient testing. Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies. Slaughterhouses fear that one grinder’s discovery of E. coli will set off a recall of ingredients they sold to others."
• "Food scientists have registered increasing concern about the virulence of this pathogen since only a few stray cells can make someone sick, and they warn that federal guidance to cook meat thoroughly and to wash up afterward is not sufficient. A test by The Times found that the safe handling instructions are not enough to prevent the bacteria from spreading in the kitchen."
• "The meat industry treats much of its practices and the ingredients in ground beef as trade secrets. While the Department of Agriculture has inspectors posted in plants and has access to production records, it also guards those secrets. Federal records released by the department through the Freedom of Information Act blacked out details of Cargill’s grinding operation that could be learned only through copies of the documents obtained from other sources. Those documents illustrate the restrained approach to enforcement by a department whose missions include ensuring meat safety and promoting agriculture markets."
• '“As the trimmings are going down the processing line into combos or boxes, no one is inspecting every single piece,” said one federal inspector who monitored Greater Omaha and requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly."
• "Last year, workers sued Greater Omaha, alleging that they were not paid for the time they need to clean contaminants off their knives and other gear before and after their shifts. The company is contesting the lawsuit."
• "As it fed ingredients into its grinders, Cargill watched for some unwanted elements. Using metal detectors, workers snagged stray nails and metal hooks that could damage the grinders, then warned suppliers to make sure it did not happen again. But when it came to E. coli O157:H7, Cargill did not screen the ingredients and only tested once the grinding was done. The potential pitfall of this practice surfaced just weeks before Ms. Smith’s patty was made. A company spot check in May 2007 found E. coli in finished hamburger, which Cargill disclosed to investigators in the wake of the October outbreak. But Cargill told them it could not determine which supplier had shipped the tainted meat since the ingredients had already been mixed together."
• "The food safety officer at American Foodservice, which grinds 365 million pounds of hamburger a year, said it stopped testing trimmings a decade ago because of resistance from slaughterhouses. “They would not sell to us,” said Timothy P. Biela, the officer. “If I test and it’s positive, I put them in a regulatory situation. One, I have to tell the government, and two, the government will trace it back to them. So we don’t do that.”'
• "In August 2008, the U.S.D.A. issued a draft guideline again urging, but not ordering, processors to test ingredients before grinding. “Optimally, every production lot should be sampled and tested before leaving the supplier and again before use at the receiver,” the draft guideline said. But the department received critical comments on the guideline, which has not been made official. Industry officials said that the cost of testing could unfairly burden small processors and that slaughterhouses already test. In an October 2008 letter to the department, the American Association of Meat Processors said the proposed guideline departed from U.S.D.A.’s strategy of allowing companies to devise their own safety programs, “thus returning to more of the agency’s ‘command and control’ mind-set.”
• "With help from his laboratories, The Times prepared three pounds of ground beef dosed with a strain of E. coli that is nonharmful but acts in many ways like O157:H7. Although the safety instructions on the package were followed, E. coli remained on the cutting board even after it was washed with soap. A towel picked up large amounts of bacteria from the meat."
• "After four months of negotiations, Cargill agreed to increase its scrutiny of suppliers and their testing, including audits and periodic checks to determine the accuracy of their laboratories. A recent industry test in which spiked samples of meat were sent to independent laboratories used by food companies found that some missed the E. coli in as many as 80 percent of the samples."

What does this mean for burger lovers? Y&H's quick take is that you should ask your butcher to grind your beef from whole cuts, traceable to specific and reliable producers, instead of relying on pre-ground product manufactured from unknown sources.

The restaurant burger is another matter entirely. Y&H will contact local burger outlets and get their take on this situation. I'll publish their remarks on the blog as they come in.

Reports CNN:

The CDC has not identified what food or foods might be causing this outbreak. It is also not yet releasing a list states involved in the investigation, which they say is ongoing.

CDC officials and state public health workers are conducting case control studies, which means they're tracking down people who have been infected as early as September to determine what they may have consumed, to find a common cause.

The Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Department of Agriculture are in contact with the CDC, but without a determination of the cause of the outbreak, their involvement is limited.