Shelter inadvertently breaks federal food regs

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - Inside the walk-in freezer at Joy Junction, there are full chickens, frozen meals, and pounds upon pounds of beef. But it’s the beef that the U.S. Department of Agriculture has a beef with.

“It’s a surprise for us,” Jeremy Reynalds, founder of Joy Junction, told KRQE News 13. “After the state fair, some folks will have a cow or chicken killed. They’ll have the cow killed, sent out to a non-USDA slaughter house in the area, and then they want to give it to us out of an act of a kind heart.”

Due to health regulations, Joy Junction would not serve that meat to guests, but they would serve it to their staff. Joy Junction serves about 16,000 meals every month to Albuquerque's needy. 

“We pay minimum wage for many of our staff, so being able to give them this meat was an added bonus,” Reynalds said.

A compliance inspector with the USDA stopped by this past week, checked out the freezer, and let Reynalds know about an inadvertent violation.

Officials with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection service say under the Federal Meat Inspection act, this meat “doesn’t fall under the custom slaughter situation because the meat is for public distribution, whether to workers or to homeless shelter residents.” 

Accepting the meat doesn’t comply with the requirements for sanitation and record keeping, which are designed to protect the public from pathogens.

Reynalds says he hopes other charitable organizations take note, and that Joy Junction will discard all of the beef in question.