Check that meat before you eat, Lucky and Albertsons warn

Ed Koch and Mary Manning

Thursday, June 7, 2007 | 7:14 a.m.

Las Vegas' four Lucky stores have been added to the list of grocers in 10 Western states that sold potentially tainted meat that is being recalled, a spokeswoman for Lucky's parent company said Wednesday.

Eleven illnesses have been linked to the tainted meat, which triggered the Class 1 recall, the most serious of three levels for health threat. No cases have been confirmed in Nevada.

Supervalu Inc., owner of the Albertson's grocery chain, which includes Lucky, announced the recall Sunday of 75,000 pounds of Moran's ground beef with sell-by dates of April 20 to May 7. The announcement did not mention that the meat with possible E. coli contamination also was sold in its Lucky stores in Las Vegas.

Albertson's regional spokeswoman Lilia Rodriguez said the omission was unintentional. When the recall was announced, she said, there were just two Albertson's-owned Lucky stores in Las Vegas. Two other local Albertson s stores were rebranded as Lucky stores on Wednesday.

"This was more of a notification than a recall, because the product already had been sold. We weren't pulling it off of our shelves," Rodriguez said. "Our primary concern is to get the word out to customers who might still have this product in their freezers."

Rodriguez said regardless of which stores were mentioned in the recall news release, the four local Lucky s and 37 Southern Nevada Albertsons have posted signs near meat counters alerting consumers .

Rodriguez said she had no information about how much meat, if any, was returned to local Albertsons or Lucky stores or whether anyone got sick from eating it.

The International Society for Infectious Diseases reported that 11 people have gotten sick from eating the meat that is the subject of the recall initiated by Moran's distributor United Food Group LLC.

Four of the ill are from Arizona - two from Maricopa County, one from Yavapai County and a fourth from Navajo County, the society said. A child in Maricopa and an adult in Yavapai were hospitalized.

Three other stricken people reside in Southern California and another lives in Utah.

The Southern Nevada Health District, the Washoe County Health District and the Nevada State Health Department have recorded no confirmed cases of E. coli stemming from the recall.

Larry Mangels, a customer at the Lucky at Eastern Avenue and Bonanza Road, said he bought some of the meat in question before its sell-by date and got mildly ill after eating it. He did not seek medical attention or report his illness to authorities.

Mangels said when he read a short Associated Press story Tuesday in another newspaper and noticed that it did not mention local Lucky stores being included in the recall, he thought consumers were being misled.

"There are Lucky customers like me who bought this meat and froze it and may be thinking everything is OK because Lucky was not mentioned in the story," Mangels said. "The butcher at Lucky told me they want to get the word out so people won't eat this meat and get sick."

E. coli can lead to kidney failure. Symptoms include fever, severe stomach cramps, weakness and bloody diarrhea.

Rodriguez said the policy of Albertson s and Lucky stores is to take back any product that a customer is not satisfied with - recalled or not - and give a refund or replace it with a product of equal value.

The UPC numbers on the potentially tainted meat in 1- to 5-pound packages have the prefix 34779, followed by 21117, 60000, 60010, 60501, 91000, 96000 or 96194. Also, Albertson s brand 90/10 sirloin hamburger patties were recalled.

Other stores where potentially tainted meat was sold were Fry's, Grocery Outlet, Save-A-Lot, SaveMart, Smart and Final, Smith's and Stater Bros.