000779 Experimental Plan Lowers Chicken Contamination

Washington - Chickens that are slaughtered under an experimental new inspection system are showing lower rates of disease, harmful microbes and fecal contamination, the Agriculture Department says.

The incidence of fecal contamination in seven poultry plants dropped from 2.4% to 0.2% under the new system. The prevalence of salmonella bacteria on the chickens dropped slightly, from 6.1% to 5.5%.

“If this pattern is maintained then I think we're on to something on how to modify slaughter inspection ... to significantly improve consumer protections,” Thomas Billy, administrator of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, said Monday.

Under the new system, which is the subject of a court battle between USDA and its inspectors' union, the department is experimenting with ending its traditional poke-and-sniff method of inspecting animal carcasses.

Inspectors leave it to plant employees to check the carcasses and instead do more testing for microbes and sampling for fecal contamination. They are also supposed to supervise the plant workers who are doing the hands-on inspections.

The union won a legal victory last month when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled unanimously that federal laws require that USDA inspectors do hands-on checks of animal carcasses.

USDA officials say that's a waste of their inspectors' time because harmful microbes can't be detected by sight.

Billy said the government has not decided whether to appeal the court's decision.

The new system appears to be working, based on the results in the seven plants, said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group.

“If a government inspector does nothing all day but look at 30 birds a minute ... then they aren't able to do microbial testing or increased fecal checks at the end of the line,” she said.

But Felicia Nestor of the Government Accountability Project, which opposes the new inspection system, said USDA is trying “to turn the inspection of meat and poultry over to the industry for self-inspection.”

Test results from nine additional plants are due by the end of the year.

The tests on the seven plants showed declines in every sort of contamination or defect on the chicken carcasses, except in the incidence of so- called dressing defects, such as stray feathers. Such defects are not considered a concern for human health.

The incidence of poultry diseases that are considered dangerous to humans dropped from 0.3% to zero under the new system.

The testing was conducted by the Research Triangle Institute, an independent consulting firm. Data was collected on 14,000 carcasses before and after the new inspection system was started.

Two of the seven plants are in Alabama; the rest are in Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Virginia.

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