(Image source: LA Times)

BY ANLI XIAO

ANCHOR CHRISTINA HARTMAN

Feeling a little De ja vu? Multinational agriculture giant Cargill is recalling turkey for the second time. Here’s CBS News.

“And Cargill is issuing a second recall of ground turkey because of a possible salmonella contamination. The products were distributed nationwide and have the numbers P-963 or 963 on the package.”

It’s coming from the same spot -- Arkansas -- and, for the same reason -- salmonella. On its website, Cargill says they’re acting quickly to clean up the mess, and looking forward to prevent another one.

"Out of an abundance of caution, we are acting quickly in response to USDA’s sample testing,... we have suspended ground turkey production at our Arkansas facility until additional measures can be identified, approved by USDA, then implemented..."

Despite the repeat performance, Los Angeles Times quotes a Seattle food safety attorney who says Cargill is handling the problem the right way.

"This is how it should be done,...Cargill ... is being more quick to respond by removing potentially problematic meat from the nation's food chain.”

After the last outbreak, Cargill implemented “the most advanced sampling and monitoring system in the poultry industry.” So how did it happen again? Company spokesperson Mike Martin tells The Huffington Post...

“...salmonella is "ubiquitous" and can come from soil, water, poultry feed and any number of sources...The challenge for Cargill ... is to try to identify and eliminate the sources, reduce the amount during processing and then test for it.”

But two times in the same place? Former Food and Drug Administration food safety chief David Acheson gives NPR two possible explanations for how the Arkansas could have happened.

“...the initial source of the turkeys could be the problem. There could be a batch of turkeys with the same batch of salmonella coming in from the same farm... Another possible explanation ... could be that the cleanup in between recalls was inadequate... Salmonella can be living in a drain or on a mop or on the walls or in an air vent, so it can recolonize"

However, Food Integrity Campaign sees the reappearance as a “bigger contamination issue” and criticizes Cargill for not solving the problem.

“It's clearly a bigger contamination issue, one that was evidently not solved by Cargill's anti-bacterial safety measures after the August 3rd recall.”

Finally LA Weekly thinks the problem is systemic, saying the whole poultry industry is predisposed to these problems.

“When you're committed to whacking and pulverizing thousands of pounds of miserably treated birds a day to meet the public's demand for affordable protein, you're setting yourself -- and customers -- up for problems.”