Rikers Island honchos let $130,816 worth of meat rot into a rank mess that at least one boss thought was still good enough to feed inmates. hit the jump to read the rest of the story.
@WiL
The 65,000 pounds of spoiled meat was discovered July 11 when nauseating smells seeping from two conked-out freezer-trailers caught the nose of a correction captain, records show.
Officials at the cash-strapped city Correction Department, who cut inmate bread rations and axed ice cream in recent years to reduce food costs, were “evaluating” the waste of taxpayer money, spokeswoman Sharman Stein said.
Sources said a crew of kitchen staffers assigned to regularly check temperatures of the jail’s 33 fridges and freezers botched their primary job.
“They didn’t check it for at least five days,” a chef at the East River jail told The News.
Instead of just tossing the rancid beef, chicken and turkey, one official later moaned that the meat could have been salvaged by washing it with cider vinegar and sodium bicarbonate before serving it to inmates, sources said.
“People would have gotten sick,” the jail chef said Monday.
A supervisor added, “You can’t get rid of the toxins.”
Once the foulup was found, one jail official fumed that the waste was reported to higherups and publicized in a department memo, two sources said.
Richard Buthorn is the executive director of food services at the jail, but all questions were referred to Stein.
“Preliminary findings show that the freezers likely failed to turn back on following a loss of power after testing of electrical generators,” she said.
She insisted it was “absolutely incorrect that [the Correction Department] considered serving the spoiled food.”
It remained unclear why the walk-in freezer-trailers were not checked sooner.
The freezers were used to store food for inmates housed in the George R. Vierno and the Otis Bantum centers at Rikers.
An inventory of ruined food included cubed turkey thighs, Cajun turkey patties, veal patties, Jamaican beef patties, ground turkey, pizza pockets and cubed beef, sources said.
The lost food adds up to about 40% of the $350,000 the department has been trying to trim from its annual food budget. Officials have eliminated pepper packets, ice cream and pudding and have chopped bread servings from four slices to two.
Stein insisted the incident was the first of its kind in 17 years, a point disputed by a union leader.
“This is just the first time they are talking about it,” fumed Norman Seabrook, president of the Correction Officers’ Benevolent Association.
Seabrook called on the department to hire more officers to help monitor the food – and suggested heads should roll.
“Had this been a correction officer that neglected his or her duties, certainly they would have been transferred or suspended,” he said.
Who cares if inmates eat bad meat. If I was the warden the only food i would serve is oatmeal slop.
yeah i could care less if they eat bad meat!!!!!
sad to hear people like ya say that,, glad they did not serve that food got some bro’s in those buildings