“That letter is on display,” he said. “It’s absolutely untrue, and I can’t believe we ended up on that list.”
Paul Hinson, manager of Huff’s Family Restaurant, said he hadn’t heard his eatery was named, but called the listing preposterous.
He said he knew companies were being told by distributors they were affected by the recall, but he certainly wasn’t.
“That’s not one of my vendors,” he said. “I don’t even use them. I don’t know how I got on that list.”
Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Health, acknowledged that the list is probably not definitive.
Her office, she said, compiled the information by identifying meat distributors believed to have received the Chino beef and asking for their customer lists from the last two years.
The information, Brooks said, would likely change more than once.
“This list can go seven, eight layers deep,” she said. “So going through this process could take days or even weeks.”
Earlier this month, the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company recalled a large amount of its beef after a videotape emerged showing slaughterhouse workers using electric prods and forklifts on sick cattle and sending the animals to be processed as food.
Brooks said the retraction of the beef counted as a “Class 2” recall, meaning that no illness had been linked directly to the meat and that the risk among consumers was considered low.
