Outback & Burger King May Be Part Of Beef Recall

Buried in the details of the Christmas Eve National Steak & Poultry beef recall are clues to the identity of at least some of the restaurant chains that are customers of NS&P.

I mentioned several of these possible customers in yesterday's blog post. And, today, I think that I have tracked down one more major recipient of the recalled beef products – the Evergreen Restaurant Group, which franchises Outback Steakhouse restaurants in the Pacific Northwest and also appears to be associated with Burger King locations in Texas, California and other states.

Included in the long list of recalled meats are three products – 4-ounce boneless beef sirloin steaks, 7-ounce boneless beef sirloin tri tips, and 9-ounce boneless beef sirloin tri tips – identified with the abbreviation EGN. After much semi-random searching, I have concluded that EGN stands for Evergreen, as in Evergreen Restaurant Group.

CDC, USDA, and the various state agencies involved in the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak investigation know very well which restaurants served outbreak victims. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been possible for them to trace the contaminated meat back to National Steak & Poultry.

Consumers should not have to play guessing games in order to figure out whether the steak they ate at their favorite restaurant chain may have been contaminated. Do we have to wait until one of the outbreak victims contacts Bill Marler before we find out where the recalled meat was shipped?