031012 Times Says New Rules Fail to Stop Tainted Meat

Augusta, GA (New York Times) - Government inspectors monitoring the automated processing line at the Shapiro Packing meat plant here over the past three years repeatedly discovered sides of beef mottled with cattle manure, a host for bacteria that can be deadly to consumers.

Last November the inspectors also found E. coli O157:H7, a dangerous bacterium spread by cattle waste, in hamburger and stopped a shipment waiting to go to public schools from a Shapiro meat-grinding facility. Yet the Department of Agriculture delayed more forceful action and never did more than threaten to shut the packing plant down.

The history of recurring violations at the Shapiro plant illustrates the weaknesses in a new food safety system that the department phased in nationwide from 1998 to 2000, say consumer groups, critics in Congress and some government inspectors.

Critics say the department's inspection arm, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, has been lax in enforcing safety procedures under the new program, even at plants with repeated violations.

Government audits, interviews with current and former inspectors and a close look at some of 113 meat recalls last year — a record number — show that the inspection service has been slow to establish guidelines for dealing with repeat offenders and has done a poor job of training its inspectors, leaving many uncertain when to take action.

As a result, the government has too often waited until meat became contaminated — and people have become sick — before forcing plants to make safety changes.

In years past, government inspectors patrolled the slaughterhouses, looking to reject, or condemn, carcasses with tumors and other obvious defects. In overhauling the system, the department expanded its focus to include a new and growing threat from invisible pathogens, and it placed the burden on companies to design their own rigorous safety plans.

Agriculture Department officials say they have made significant progress recently toward strengthening their monitoring and enforcement procedures.

"I'm confident that when we put the U.S.D.A. mark of inspection on a product that goes to the consumer that we're sure it is safe," said Dr. Garry L. McKee, the chief of the inspection service. "The system is working."

Many meat companies have made substantial safety improvements on their own. But though few consumers realize it, the government's weak enforcement has generated wide variations among meat suppliers, with some — prodded by wary restaurant and grocery chains — taking far greater precautions than others.

According to government inspection reports, on more than 50 days from early 2001 until July, inspectors at the Shapiro Packing plant found feces on carcasses moving down the processing line. Its meat ends up in schools, supermarkets and fast-food restaurants across the country.

On 11 days the inspectors at the plant even found the manure on numerous carcasses that had already been through special cleansing washes of hot water and acid.

Yet the Agriculture Department did not react more forcefully to the inspectors' reports until last July, when it threatened to stop the plant from operating. Even then, regulators allowed Shapiro to keep shipping, based on its pledges to correct procedures identified as the cause of the problems.

Shapiro says it removes any contamination and has never shipped unsafe meat. Dane Bernard, vice president for food safety at Keystone Foods, the private company that manages Shapiro Packing, said that the plant has fixed "95%" of the problems identified by department officials.

"We have not been putting the public at risk and that's the bottom line," Mr. Bernard said.

Even critics say that the concept of the new system, emphasizing illness prevention, is a big step in the right direction. But Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is the ranking minority member on the Senate Agriculture Committee, said that the Agriculture Department "really doesn't have good enforcement procedures, and they don't have any clear standards for judging whether a company's plan is adequate or not."

RETURN TO HOME PAGE

E-mail: sflanagan@sprintmail.com