010414 U.S. to Stop Salmonella Tests for School Beef

Washington - Consumer groups criticized a Bush administration plan to stop requiring that federal purchases of ground beef for the national school lunch program be tested for illness-causing salmonella.

The US Department of Agriculture, which buys more than 100 million pounds of ground beef annually for federal lunch programs, last summer ordered suppliers to test raw meat for salmonella, E. coli 0157:H7 and other food-borne bacteria.

The meat industry bitterly opposed the USDA's contract specification, arguing that it increased the government's cost of ground beef and was an unfair way to assess a company's overall sanitation standards.

The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, which purchases beef and other commodities for the school lunch program, issued a notice last week saying it planned to stop requiring the food safety tests.

Of the 120 million pounds of ground beef purchased and tested last year, 7% was rejected for various types of contamination, according to USDA data.

More than half of that amount -- or 4.8 million pounds -- contained salmonella, said the USDA tests.

Salmonella can cause vomiting, diarrhea and fever in healthy adults, and can be deadly for the elderly or people with weak immune systems. An estimated 600 Americans die from salmonella annually out of 1.4 million who become ill from the bacterium.

Consumer groups said they would fight the USDA action.

``Last year, the USDA rejected almost 5 million pounds for salmonella contamination in meat intended for schoolchildren, so now they're not going to look for it any more. That just doesn't make sense,'' said Carol Tucker Foreman, food safety specialist with the Consumer Federation of America.

Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the salmonella testing was an important tool to keep food safe for the millions of US schoolchildren who buy subsidized lunches.

One of the biggest sellers of ground beef to the USDA was Supreme Beef Processors, a Texas company that failed four sets of salmonella tests before declaring bankruptcy last September. In the 1999-2000 school year, Supreme Beef sold $23.3 million worth of beef to the government.

Supreme Beef won a federal court ruling that the USDA could not test for salmonella to measure whether a beef plant was clean and sanitary. The case has been appealed.

USDA REQUIRES OTHER SAFETY MEASURES

Ken Clayton, acting administrator for the Agricultural Marketing Service, said the agency planned to make other changes to improve food safety.

Meat processors that want to sell ground beef, pork or ground turkey to the federal government will have to adopt quality-control programs that meet ``statistical process control limits,'' according to USDA documents.

``Our objective in buying ground meat for school lunch, particularly, and other feeding programs is to ensure that we are buying the safest possible food,'' Clayton told reporters.

``We have been reminded periodically this year that simply testing the end- product in fact is not the best way to get the safest possible food,'' he added.

Clayton said the USDA would continue to test its ground beef purchases for the presence of E. coli 0157:H7, a relatively rare but particularly lethal bacterium.

The USDA's planned contract specifications will also allow beef processors to irradiate ground beef to destroy any disease-causing bacteria. That treatment, approved by federal regulators two years ago, has been criticized by some consumer groups that say irradiation will tempt companies simply to sterilize feces and other sources of contamination rather than working to prevent them in the first place.

Clayton said the USDA would finalize its contract terms before it began purchasing ground beef in July for the school lunch program.

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com