Ever wonder why schools in the Baltimore region can?t look in their own backyard to buy meat, especially after some suspected tainted beef from California ended up in the schools? refrigerators.
The reason? Cost and supply, farmers say.
“The big issue for them is getting local producers who can supply the volume of ground beef that they need,” said Ned Sayre, a Harford County beef farmer and the Maryland state representative on the American Farm Bureau Beef Committee.
“Then there?s the price side of it. When you?re dealing with smaller, local producers, we?re probably going to be more expensive.”
In Anne Arundel, for instance, the school system uses 200,000 pounds of beef a year. It allocates money to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which goes out and finds the beef for the schools, which describe how it should be processed, said Jodi Risse, the supervisor of food and nutrition services.
The nation?s largest beef recall, announced last month by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was issued for 143 million pounds of beef from the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino, Calif. A large chunk of the meat was received by schools through the National School Lunch Program.
Anne Arundel, as well as Baltimore and Carroll counties, all reported receiving shipments of the questionable meat and were ordered to place the cases of tainted meat aside.
When the recall was issued, the school systems had more than 140 cases of the beef and used it for various lunch meals, such as meat sauce for spaghetti.
Sue duPont, spokeswoman for the Maryland Department of Agriculture, also said costs remain the obstacle when buying locally.
“The challenges are usually costs to provide a reliable supply and the volume of meat they have to get,” she said.
Sayre said he?s not aware of any school systems in the state that receive their beef from local farms.
