021043 Tougher Meat Safety Rules On The Way

In the wake of two of the nation's biggest meat recalls ever, the Bush administration has decided that the nation's meat inspection system is “broken” and is promising tough new enforcement standards to restore consumer confidence.

The announcements already have been met with skepticism from some critics. But others say the warnings signal the growing concern that the current system is failing because its standards have been poorly enforced.

The existing system relies in large measure on the industry spotting and correcting its own problems, with government oversight. In a surprisingly harsh speech Friday, Garry McKee, the newly appointed administrator of the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety Inspection Service, told meat industry executives, “Your system is broken, and it needs to be repaired.” He said the USDA plans to step up enforcement of food safety regulations by more rigorously training its consumer safety officers and instituting tougher testing for listeria, the microbe that was responsible for the most recent recall.

“We're scheduling officers to go to all U.S. plants to make sure they're being properly monitored,” McKee says. If his officers find that a plant doesn't have adequate safeguards, they can remove the USDA inspectors, making it impossible for the plant to move its product out into the market.

He also says he wants to position the food inspection service as a public health agency on par with agencies like the Food and Drug Administration.

Some people say the crackdown is overdue. In July, Con-Agra Foods recalled 19 million pounds of ground beef. And this month saw the nation's largest recall yet: 27.4 million pounds of deli meats by Wampler Foods of Pennsylvania. The listeria outbreak that prompted the recall killed seven people, caused three pregnant women to miscarry and sickened at least 46.

The recalls have been “horrendously embarrassing” and could become a campaign issue, says Felicia Nestor, food safety project director of the Government Accountability Project, a watchdog group based in Washington, D.C.

Since 1906, meat inspection in the USA has depended on the old “poke and sniff” system, with inspectors literally smelling and touching the meat to check for contamination. But because of a rise in microbial infections that sight and smell inspections were missing, in 1998 the nation adopted the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) system, which is designed to identify and conduct regular testing of critical places in the production process where contamination can occur.

But critics -- and McKee himself -- say the problem with HACCP is that although it's easy to write a plan that sounds good, plants don't always use those test results to fix their systems.

“That's like playing catch with a hornet's nest and not recognizing that you might get stung,” McKee said in Friday's speech. Recalls represent “a failure in the system,” McKee said, and he called for the meat and poultry industries to change the way they process their products.

Currently, plants test for pathogens and then recall or cook meat when they're found. McKee said the key is to keep contamination from occurring.

J. Patrick Boyle, president and CEO of the American Meat Institute, says he was surprised by McKee's assertion that safety programs weren't being implemented fully.

“It's clearly not our experience in the meat and poultry industry,” he says. “If that is the case, then shame on the plants and shame on the (government) inspectors in charge. It's not a failing on the part of industry alone. It's a joint failing on the part of industry and government.”

Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., chided the USDA for not acting sooner.

“They should have done this before. What happened this summer has forced the Bush administration to make pronouncements to try to clean up a program that wasn't being adequately enforced.”

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com