010128 Glickman to GOP: Don't Nix Safety Standards

Washington - Republicans risk a public backlash if they reverse food standards and forest protections the Clinton administration imposed over the opposition of industry, Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman said.

“They're going to have to be very, very careful with the politics of turning these things around,” Glickman said in his final news conference before leaving office Saturday.

He said he had personally appealed to Agriculture Secretary-designate Ann Veneman not to “shift and turn 180 degrees and go the other way.” Veneman has declined to be interviewed before she is confirmed by the Senate.

Glickman asserted he “led a revolution in food safety” during his six-year tenure, overhauling the nation's meat inspection system and developing new microbial testing standards.

The department is now embroiled in a legal battle with meatpackers over salmonella testing standards that the industry thinks are arbitrary and unnecessary. USDA is appealing a lower court decision that favored the meat industry.

President Clinton this spring called for more testing in meat plants for listeria, a pathogen found in hot dogs, cold cuts and other processed meats. Glickman, however, said he wasn't sure if the White House would issue the proposed rules before the Bush administration takes over.

Despite criticism from Republicans in Congress, the Clinton administration also declared 58.5 million acres of national forests with no existing roads off- limits to new road building and most logging, and the Forest Service declared all old-growth trees in national forests off limits to logging.

In other comments, Glickman said:

- Mad-cow disease will be a major issue for Veneman. So far, the government does not think the disease has spread from Europe to the United States, but “this is one area we cannot rest on our laurels, at all.”

Scientists at Harvard are studying whether the government's preventive measures are adequate. USDA prohibits the import of European cattle, and the Food and Drug Administration has banned the feeding of animal proteins, such as meat and bone meal, to cattle and sheep.

- Farmers will benefit from USDA's new focus on diet and nutrition, because it will increase the department's visibility and thus its ability to gain support for farm programs. Under Glickman, the department has undertaken research to determine which of the nation's popular diets are best. USDA also sponsored nutrition research conferences and created Web sites providing nutrition information.

“We are stronger today as a department and our farmers will be stronger because we have flexed our muscles and gotten into areas we have traditionally not gotten into.”

- He tried “to make this a better, fairer, and more just place to work. ... That hasn't always been easy, but we've made great progress.” Under Glickman, the department settled a class-action lawsuit over its former treatment of black farmers and is now being sued by Indians, Hispanic and women with similar discrimination complaints.

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