Richard Greener - The Knowland Retribution

She arranged the lunch carefully on the table in front of Mr. Stein’s couch. When Nathan and Tom returned she told them the food had arrived. Then she left them, closing the door behind her.

“What is it we’re sure of, Tom? Actually know, not surmise.”

“We’re certain the Knowland amp; Sons plant in Lucas, Tennessee, has turned out beef, ground beef, that’s testing positive for E. coli and that it’s happening too frequently for them to disregard. They’re thinking of shutting down and recalling the meat.”

“How frequent is too frequent?”

“The problem seems to be that they’ve been cited for violations an awful lot. In and of itself, that’s not big news. Every meat plant’s got E. coli violations. It’s all part of the game. But now there’s so much bad meat going out, and they’ve got so many violations, they think they may push the inspectors too far, which is hard to do. Ordinarily, they might recall the meat, shut themselves down, get cleaned up. That costs money, but sometimes it has to be done. Except now, MacNeal is worried about the deal. He wants to know how bad it will hurt to shut down. He wants to know if we can put off the IPO or pull some other rabbit out of the hat. He’s scared and he’s looking to us for direction.” He stopped and listened for signs of progress.

“How can they turn out beef with E. coli? How does that happen?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, Nathan, but you probably won’t eat beef anymore.” Tom laughed and took a forkful of salmon and spinach dripping in sesame sauce. He hoped the walk, the food, and the casual laughter would put Nathan’s mind at ease. For all of his faults, Nathan Stein had a keen sense of what to do in the trenches. “That’s where we are for sure,” thought Tom, “ in the trenches.” He wanted Nathan clear-headed and sharp as ever. He reiterated the process Billy Mac and Pat Grath had already outlined, complete with its potential downside effect. Tom had been sitting with Wesley Pitts when Billy Mac and Grath were on the conference call. Grath explained the concept of “captive supplies” and the money to be made speculating in live cattle. Knowland had done that, and the herd in question was, they thought, limited to the Tennessee plant. They were almost certain of that much. However, they had also been “mixing” more than usual-this on Billy Mac’s orders, which he freely admitted. By “mixing” foreign beef with their existing domestic supply they could increase profits dramatically in the short run. Billy Mac’s emphasis was now completely on the short run. He was selling the whole shebang and he wanted cash flow at the highest possible level in anticipation of the stock offering. The plant was also operating around the clock-three full shifts. Everybody in and around Lucas who could walk, crawl, or be dragged into that plant was working there, most six days, and some seven days a week. Almost all of them worked overtime because they always had trouble staffing the third shift. “Like it or not,” Billy Mac said to Tom and Wes, “we got drunks, junkies-amphetamines are real big around there-poorly trained incompetents, and men who haven’t had a night’s sleep in a week. Hey, look. you want the production, you get it any way you can. We got lines running three hundred cattle an hour!” Pat Grath had already talked about “operator fatigue”-a problem that haunted the industry-and he pointed out that the injury rate was now the highest in the company’s history.

“It’s a fucking time bomb,” said Billy Mac, “but who gives a shit. Soon as this thing goes down, we’re outta there.”

Very nice, thought Tom. However, Billy MacNeal conveniently overlooked the fact that another Stein, Gelb client, Alliance, would inherit his problems and pay a handsome sum to do so.

Grath had explained how the cattle are killed. Tom, obligingly, passed the information along to Nathan. One by one, he told him, the cows were herded into a chute, big enough for only a single animal. “Cows are dumber than shit,” Tom recalled Grath saying, with his usual, West Texas, semi-arrogant laugh. “But you’d be surprised how many of them get real antsy right about then, moving around, sort of trying to get out, you know, eyes all funny, squealing like pigs. Almost like they know what’s coming.” And what was coming was The End. The Knocker-that’s what Grath said they called him-used a handheld device that quite literally thrust a steel bolt in the cow’s head. “The cow goes down,” Grath had said, “usually dead. But when you’re running a line at three hundred head an hour, well, goddamnit, you’re pushing one through every ten seconds or so. Some of them don’t die. They’re still alive.” After the cow went down, it was hoisted, hung upside down with chains. Its throat was cut. Most of the animals that were still alive died then. However, a few didn’t. Federal law was quite specific on this point. The animal had to be “insensible” to pain before butchering was allowed. Grath had snorted at this point in his recitation. “What are they gonna do? Call Johnny Cochran?” The next stop on the line was the giant scissors. They looked like scissors, so that’s what Grath called them. Here the cow, dead or alive, had its legs cut off. As Tom told all this to Nathan Stein, he felt an irrepressible urge to laugh-the kind of laugh people have when something awful happens to someone else, the kind of laugh that says, “I’m so glad it’s you, not me.” He also saw that Nathan was queasy, visibly shaken by the image of anything hung upside down and having its legs cut off.

“You alright?” he asked. Nathan just nodded. Having successfully stifled his nervous laughter, Tom continued. The carcass gets skinned and split in half, he explained. Then it’s subjected to Steam Pasteurization, during which the meat is blasted with steam at 180 degrees while passing through a stainless steel chamber thirty-two feet long. When the beef emerges from “SP,” as Grath called it, another operator does a Steam Vacuum. The “SV” process is just like a carpet cleaner, he told them. It uses hot water and steam in a vacuum to pick off any remaining hair or fecal matter. “That’s cow shit for you fellas in New York City,” Grath said with a chuckle. He knew they knew he had never been close to cow shit.

After this, according to Grath’s running commentary, the meat was cut up and finally tested for contaminants. Tom stopped at this point to eat the last of his salmon and check Nathan’s intestinal stability.

“You okay?” he asked, patting his own stomach.

“Yeah,” said Nathan.

“Here’s the thing,” Tom said, “there’s always some meat that tests positive for E. coli. What they do with that meat is sell it to people who make chili-”

“What!”

“No, no. Don’t laugh. It’s true. They sell the bad meat for chili and dog food because it’s cooked before it’s sold to the public. Remember, if you cook beef to 160 degrees the E. coli is killed off. It’s only a serious problem when you eat those burgers rare. Grath said he himself adds prune puree to ground beef before making a burger; it’s supposed to suppress the E. coli, and, he says, makes the burger taste better if its cooked well done. So anyway, it’s the chili folks and others who make precooked beef products who get all the contaminated meat.”

“Holy shit,” Nathan said. “Do you eat chili?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Me neither. Not anymore. Is that legal? Selling it for chili?”

“It’s either legal or nobody much cares. Pat says that’s SOP. But what happened here is they needed so much meat to make their own quota that, first, they didn’t test as much of the meat as they’re supposed to. A lot of it went straight to the grinders. Second, some of the inspectors were tired, hungover, whatever-not up to their usual standards. Those guys work for the government, but they’re local people too. They were driving the line. Production was beyond plant capacity and they cut some corners. When they grind this stuff, according to Grath, it all gets mixed together, sort of like putting dressing on a salad and tossing it. The E. coli present in one batch spreads to others, and the whole thing with ground beef is that it’s so thoroughly combined the bacteria shows up everywhere.”