Foreign material is one of the top disruptors in the beef process. Among the various types of materials encountered, birdshot has resurfaced as a topic of conversation.
Classified as an adulterant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service and the Food and Drug Administration, any product containing birdshot or similar contaminants cannot be sold for human consumption. When detected, entire animals may be condemned, leading to substantial economic losses.
The origins of lead shot in cattle are not always clear, but one likely source is bird hunters whose shotgun blasts stray beyond their intended targets. Ranches with hunting leases are particularly vulnerable. Another source may be ranchers who, out of frustration, use birdshot to herd stubborn cattle — an unacceptable practice that undermines the credibility of ranchers in the food safety arena.
Birdshot contamination has been a known issue since the first National Beef Quality Audit in the early 1990s, and it remains a concern. According to the 2022 National Beef Quality Audit, all packing plants reported finding buckshot or birdshot in beef from market cows and bulls. Birdshot is found in beef carcasses at a rate of about 105 times per year, more than twice the rate of any other foreign object.
The financial cost of even a single incident is steep. For example, if one pellet of birdshot makes it through the grinder in a processing line producing 5 million ground beef patties daily, it could result in $10,000 worth of lost product and downtime.
One processor, Trevor Caviness, president of Caviness Beef Packers, which operates in Hereford and Amarillo, has been leading efforts to raise awareness about the dangers of buckshot and birdshot contamination.
“We’re making a strong effort to educate ranchers on the problem,” Caviness explained. “We’ve started notifying suppliers, ranchers, and sale barns that we’ve discovered buckshot in the harvest and fabrication process,” Cavines told ROUNDTop. “It’s an effort to give ranchers a heads-up on the problem, an informational tool that we hope will help solve or reduce the problem.”
