990711 Industry Opposes Mandatory Meat Recall Plan

Washington - The food industry, which now decides when to recall tainted products, objected to President Clinton's push for government authority to force recalls of unsafe meat and poultry.

“Congress should grant” the USDA “the authority to impose civil penalties and to order mandatory recalls of unsafe meat and poultry,” Clinton.

“Government mandates may score political points but they won't make the system safer,” said Gene Grabowski, a spokesman for the Grocery Manufacturers of America, a trade association of brand-name food companies.

Grabowski said that whenever there have been beef recalls, the companies, in order to maintain “consumer trust,” move more rapidly than the government ever could to address problems.

“Companies have every incentive to act swiftly and responsibly in protecting the world's safest food supply,” said Grabowski. The lobbying group represents 132 of the largest food companies in the nation.

Clinton also said that he is acting to ward off a potential health hazard by assuring that food products rejected at one U.S. port are conspicuously marked and not easily slipped past inspectors at another - a practice known as “port shopping.”

“Americans have a right to know that the food they serve their families is safe, whether it comes from the far corners of the world or the corner produce stand,” the president said.

Clinton said he is ordering the Customs Service and the Food and Drug Administration to “rigorously enforce and expand our policy of destroying imported food that poses a serious health threat rather than risk letting it reach our grocery stores or the global market.”

But he said he does not want to be unduly alarmist.

“There's no evidence that these fruits and vegetables are less safe than those grown here in the United States,” Clinton said. “But some recent outbreaks of food-borne illness have been traced in imported foods.”

In a memo to the secretaries of the Treasury and Health and Human Services departments, Clinton noted that food imports have doubled over the past seven years and that a further 30% increase is expected by 2002.

And he called attention to a recent General Accounting Office report which concluded that some food importers are sidestepping the laws “and getting contaminated foods across our borders and onto our kitchen tables.

“It takes only one 'bad apple' to spoil the whole bunch, only one shipment of contaminated food to threaten hundreds, even thousands of Americans,” Clinton said.

He said Congress should vote the full $72 million he requested to increase the number of inspectors and checks of high-risk food products in the United States and increase the number of inspections of food processors around the world.

Carol Tucker Foreman, head of the Consumer Federation of America, applauded Clinton's moves.

“With today's announcement, the president has done just about all he can do through the executive branch to assure the safety of imported foods,” she said in a statement. “With Americans eating increasingly from an international plate, this is an important issue for all of us.”

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