Restaurants:

Local restaurants are crying foul at their inclusion on a state list of possible buyers of tainted beef, saying they don’t have any relation to the Chino slaughterhouse that recalled 143 million pounds of its meat.

Several managers and owners say they know their distributors well and have never had a relation to the Hallmark/Westland Meat Packing Co. in Chino, directly or indirectly.

They said they were indignant at their inclusion on such a list.

Jon’s Coffee Shop manager Mike Dubrin said he’s had to post a letter from his meat distributor on the wall denying any relation to the slaughterhouse.

“That letter is on display,” he said. “It’s absolutely untrue, and I can’t believe we ended up on that list.”

Paul Hinson, manager of Huff’s Family Restaurant, said he hadn’t heard his eatery was named, but called the listing preposterous.

He said he knew companies were being told by distributors they were affected by the recall, but he certainly wasn’t.

“That’s not one of my vendors,” he said. “I don’t even use them. I don’t know how I got on that list.”

Lea Brooks, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Health, acknowledged that the list is probably not definitive.

Her office, she said, compiled the information by identifying meat distributors believed to have received the Chino beef and asking for their customer lists from the last two years.

The information, Brooks said, would likely change more than once.

“This list can go seven, eight layers deep,” she said. “So going through this process could take days or even weeks.”

Earlier this month, the Westland/Hallmark Meat Company recalled a large amount of its beef after a videotape emerged showing slaughterhouse workers using electric prods and forklifts on sick cattle and sending the animals to be processed as food.

Brooks said the retraction of the beef counted as a “Class 2” recall, meaning that no illness had been linked directly to the meat and that the risk among consumers was considered low.