Washington - A consumer group launched a grassroots campaign on Wednesday to try and win bipartisan support for a Clinton Administration bill giving the U.S. Agriculture Department the power to recall tainted meat.
The bill, introduced last October by Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a Democrat, has mustered little support on the Senate Agriculture Committee because of fierce opposition by the meat industry.
Meat industry groups have attacked the bill as unnecessary, given the USDA's existing powers and its ability to alert the public to any meat or poultry suspected of contamination.
Senate Agriculture committee chairman Sen. Richard Lugar, an Indiana Republican, has said he opposed the legislation but remained open to forming a consensus bill of some type to address food safety issues.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest said it hoped to deluge Senate Agriculture committee members with Internetmessages, letters and telephone calls from the public in support of adoption of a law that would give the USDA mandatory recall authority over meat and poultry plants. The bill would also let the USDA assess civil penalties against violators.
Currently, the USDA can pull federal inspectors from plants suspected of producing bad meat -- a drastic step which effectively closes a plant -- but the department can only encourage the company to order a recall.
Last August, Hudson Foods recalled a record 25 million pounds of hamburger at the urging of the USDA after several consumers became sick from the meat.
"These are such common-sense protections," Caroline Smith DeWaal said at a news conference. "Change is hard for the industry but the public is demanding steps to make the food supply safer."
Harkin said he remained optimistic that the legislation would be adopted during what is a relatively short congressional session before recessing for the November elections.
"I believe we will get bipartisan support for enhanced food safety legislation this year," Harkin said. "What we're asking for is really very, very modest."
The consumer activist group said it also was lobbying for a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration power to order mandatory recalls of contaminated seafood, eggs, fruits and vegetables. A third piece of pending legislation would create a new federal food safety agency to replace the dozen or so units of the USDA, FDA, Centers for Disease Control and other departments that have some food safety jurisdiction.
Neither of the latter two bills is viewed as having enough support to win approval this session, according to congressional aides.
The U.S. food supply is widely acknowledged to be the safest in the world, but some 9,000 Americans die each year from food-borne illnesses, according to the government. Illnesses caused by food contaminated with salmonella, E. coli or other bacteria cause an estimated $300 million in economic losses annually.
The White House has asked Congress for an additional $101 million in fiscal 1999 to hire more food inspectors and expand research into bacteria that cause food-borne illness.
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