000632 Supreme Beef Plant Asked To Shut Down

Washington - A Texas beef processor that's at the center of a dispute over government meat-safety standards was asked by the Agriculture Department to voluntarily shut down.

Supreme Beef Processors Inc., which supplies ground beef to the national school lunch program, flunked a set of microbial tests for the fourth straight time, the department said.

A federal judge recently barred USDA from using such test results to force the closing of the facility, agreeing with the meatpacking industry that testing for salmonella bacteria was not a fair measure of whether a plant was sanitary.

The department tried to shut down the Dallas plant last fall after it flunked the first three rounds of testing. The latest failure came after the company made improvements in February to its sanitation procedures, said Thomas Billy, administrator of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.

“As a result of the court decision, FSIS has asked Supreme Beef to voluntarily suspend its ground beef operations and to determine what further corrective actions should be taken to bring the plant into compliance,” Billy said in a statement released by the department Tuesday evening.

Telephone calls to Supreme Beef for comment on USDA's request were not returned.

“It's too early to tell” what the department will do if the plant refuses to close, said Carol Blake, a spokeswoman for the food safety agency.

Although Supreme Beef is the only plant that the department has tried to close for flunking salmonella tests, others in the packing industry say the microbial standards aren't scientifically based and shouldn't be used to judge whether a plant's meat is safe.

But President Clinton last month said the dispute with Supreme Beef threatens to “undermine an inspection system that is clearly effective in reducing food poisoning, jeopardizing the confidence that consumers have in the safety of the food they eat.”

USDA withdrew its inspectors from the Supreme Beef plant Nov. 30, effectively shutting it down, but was forced to send them back later in the day when U.S. District Judge Joe Fish granted a temporary restraining order.

Fish ruled last month that the department exceeded its authority in trying to enforce the salmonella standards. His decision applies to packing plants in the northern district of Texas.

Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute, said the department should stop buying meat from Supreme Beef and post the names of the plant's customers on the Internet.

“Failing the fourth test shows that the previous failures were no accident. That's the way this company does business,” she said.

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