Southland Meat Industry, Inspections Under Probe

They are the whistle blowers.

Gregorio Natividad: “Based on my experience in Los Angeles . . . my advice to the public is not to eat meat.”

Vernie Gee: “I’ve seen gifts of meat presented to supervisors.”

Eduardo Delgado: “It’s not wholesome. It’s adulterated. It’s contaminated.”

Sandy Esquer: “Nobody gives a damn anymore. . . . And as the years go by, it’s getting worse.”

Although others choose silence or anonymity, the whistle-blowing inspectors of the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service speak openly about meat and poultry inspections in Southern California. They complain about unsanitary conditions, unwholesome meat and poultry and foot-long rats running through plants. They complain about inadequate training, staff shortages, lazy supervisors, retaliation by management and suspicions of payoffs.

In part because of the inspectors’ complaints to reporters--as well as gripes by scores of others in interviews with the inspection agency--Southern California’s meat and poultry industry, shaken in 1974-75 by the bribery of U.S. Department of Agriculture meat graders and again in 1978 by a meatpackers price-fixing scandal, is once again under scrutiny. The service’s area supervisor has retired, and the area’s inspection circuits have been reorganized.

Reports of payoffs have been passed on to the USDA’s office of the inspector general for possible investigation, according to William Carter, head of a special team assigned to the Food Safety and Inspection Service area office in Long Beach “to take corrective action.”

“We certainly do take this very seriously--any accusations along this line,” Carter said in a recent interview. “We think that (reports of payoffs) is one of the most serious things.”

Carter, a drawling veterinarian from the service’s North-Central Region, is charged with correcting conditions found in an unprecedented areawide survey of meat and poultry inspections in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Ventura counties.

Below National Level

The special review, conducted in January and February by an eight-member team from Lawrence, Kan., and agency officials from Washington, concluded that, taken as a whole, the inspection program in Southern California is “below the national norm.”

They reported wide variations in sanitation standards throughout the area, questioned the quality of overall supervision, cited the failure to train new employees in slaughter inspection, called for more efficient use of staff and recommended a realignment of the region’s eight inspection circuits.

Fanning out from Ventura to San Diego, the reviewers inspected 236 of the region’s 452 slaughtering and processing plants and reported that 33 of them--14% of those surveyed--had at least one deficiency directly involving meat products, compared to 11% nationally.

They found “serious control problems” in 14 plants--6% of the total--compared to the national average of 4%, and they wrote “inspection location reports,” which Carter equated with “unsatisfactory” ratings.

Figures for Comparison

Surveys, made available at the request of The Times, disclosed details behind an overall report that assessed the meat inspection program in Southern California largely by comparing it statistically with the rest of the nation.

Among scores of violations, the reviewers reported finding flies, fresh rodent droppings and live cockroaches; contamination of meat products by flaking paint and rust dropping from overhead pipes and refrigeration units; equipment containing the decaying residue of previous days’ operations; dirty, rusty handsaws ready for use; deeply scored cutting boards containing hair, intestine contents and heavy meat residue; hand-washing facilities without soap, towels and--in some cases--water, and dirty sinks used for washing both meat and workers’ hands.

They also found beef quarters transported on dirty truck floors and contacted by workers’ shoes; meat stored in dirty boxes and shelves; trimmings on the processing floor picked up and mixed with edible meat without washing; hair, dust and black grease on beef quarters; a golf ball-sized abscess on meat hanging near a meat grinder; a contaminated heart and liver saved as edible, and live cattle inspected for slaughter from one side only--and without lights and before sunup.

Variety of Defects

At Nagle’s Veal Inc., a Los Angeles calf-skinning and boning operation producing about 12,500 pounds of meat a week, the review officer reported that the majority of calf carcasses in the firm’s only holding and skinning cooler had “many dressing defects, including fecal matter, ingesta (intestine contents) and stains.” He wrote: “Extensive amounts of hair, fecal matter and ingesta were observed on boned meat, boning tables in operation and inside Cryovac-bagged veal cuts.”

At Daniels Western Meat Packers, a Pico Rivera retail store that prepares 75,000 pounds of product a week--most of it ground beef--the review officer reported more than a dozen deficiencies, including exposed beef being in contact with dirty shelves and dirty boxes in the freezer; open lugs of exposed product stacked on top of each other after being on a dirty wooden pallet; a processing room floor littered with empty boxes, trash, meat scraps and orange peels, and mid-shift clean-up not performed as required.

At Continental Gourmet Meats Inc., a Los Angeles processing plant producing about 41,000 pounds of product a week--a large percentage of it ready-to-eat items--the review officer reported “high-risk” deficiencies in the production of roast beef, corned beef and pastrami. According to the report, Continental was not documenting cooking times and temperatures of roast beef products and not monitoring chilling times and temperatures after cooking.

Tripe on the Floor

In the Chino area, the reviewing officer wrote four inspection location reports--the most for any circuit--after visiting 34 of the 58 inspection locations. At Atlas Meat Packing, the officer reported finding scalded beef tripe, ready for packaging, touching the floor; contamination and improper trimming of beef quarters dropped to the cooler floor; no freezer cage for retained beef carcasses, and five inches of manure in a cattle holding pen.

The reviewing officers also wrote inspection location reports at American Lamb Co. in Chino; Rosas Meat in Upland; Archer Brand Meat Products in Grand Terrace; Western Packers in Los Angeles; Atlantis Investments Inc., a small processing plant in Inglewood; Vienna Sausage Manufacturing Co. in Los Angeles; Saticoy Meat Packing Co. in Saticoy; Russak’s Cured & Smoked Products, Los Angeles; R. B. R. Meat Co., Los Angeles, and Nikabar Inc., doing business as Gold Star Meat Co., Los Angeles.

Carter agreed that there is a possibility that unwholesome meat has reached the public and agreed that there is at least the potential for a food-poisoning outbreak. But he drew a distinction between contamination of products by condensation falling from an overhead pipe and unwholesomeness that could cause food poisoning.

The potential for a food-poisoning outbreak was underscored last Friday when officials in Washington announced the recall of about 100,000 pounds of cooked roast beef produced by Russak’s, one of the firms named in the reports, after salmonella organisms had been discovered on the firm’s product during routine tests. No illnesses have been attributed to the beef so far.

Lou Gast, associate administrator of the Food Safety and Inspection Service in Washington, said at a March 27 meeting in the City of Commerce that the agency is not on “any kind of a witch hunt.” He assured the assembled meat inspectors that Ramon J. Weber, the area supervisor, had elected to retire “for the good of the program.”

In a later interview, Weber said he decided to retire rather than go through “all the trauma” of major organizational changes. He praised the agency for facing up to the problems in Southern California but declined to comment specifically about the complaints expressed by some inspectors.

“In any organization there’s going to be a little bit of everything,” he said. “When you start dealing with that kind of rhetoric, there is no way to answer. . . . We had some management problems, and the agency has taken some sound steps.”

According to Gast, all the “nitty-gritty details” collected in interviews with 201 members of the inspection staff and 238 plant managers and owners during the special review were deliberately left out of the final report.

Not All Negative

“The report is written in as positive a way as we could have written it, and that’s done on purpose as well,” he said. “We want to not impede progress by having a totally negative report. When you read negative things, you have negative reactions. You need to know that you are proud of the work that you are doing and not be picked on because of every damn little nitty-gritty thing that comes up.”

Rosemary Mucklow, executive secretary of the Oakland-based Western States Meat Assn., likened the special survey to enforcement of the 55-mile-an-hour speed limit. “That’s why we’ve got policemen,” she said. “I’m not happy that we had 14 plants that were issued these special reports. . . .

“I have every confidence that the people who received these reports are moving speedily. I think the consumers should be very comfortable that their meat is being inspected thoroughly and competently,” she said.

California had 777 plants under federal inspection last year, slightly more than 10% of the national total. Los Angeles, however, is no longer the thriving terminal market it once was because slaughtering operations have been situated closer to where the animals are raised, mostly in the Midwest.

Mostly Processing Plants

There once were dozens of slaughtering operations in the Vernon area alone, but only a handful are left. Most of the area plants are now involved in food processing, according to Mucklow.

Despite attempts to accentuate the positive, however, both insiders and outsiders quickly found fault with the areawide review.

Tom Devine, legal counsel for the private, Washington-based Government Accountability Project, a watchdog support group, observed that the report relied on statistics comparing Southern California to the rest of the nation. He charged that it was “fundamentally dishonest” because the reviewers failed to realistically assess the area’s plants. The project is conducting a nationwide investigation into the industry.

“In our opinion,” Devine said, “the real standards should have been how many problems were avoidable in Southern California, not compared with the rest of the country. What GAP has learned is that the inspection program is a national scandal.

Won’t Draw Line

“The USDA pulled one of the oldest debating tricks. They failed to define their terms and gave themselves a low passing grade. The USDA appears unwilling to draw a line anywhere. From reading this report, it appears that the USDA has not accepted the possibility that some plants have no business being in business.”

(By withholding federal inspection required for meat products shipped in interstate commerce, the Food Safety and Inspection Service can exert economic pressure on substandard operators to force them to meet USDA regulations. In some cases, plants have been forced to close because inspection was permanently denied. This has happened once in California in the last five years, a service spokesman said.)

The inspectors and others who would only talk privately were equally skeptical of the area review.

‘Nothing but a Cover-Up’

“All this paper work, and this review team is nothing but a cover-up,” said Vernie Gee, 49, a kill floor inspector with 17 years experience. “Nothing has changed. . . . They only put a drop in the bucket. There’s a lot more wrong than they said.”

“It’s just a bunch of bull,” said Sandy Esquer, a 10-year veteran of food inspection. “A cover-up, I think. I don’t think anything’s changed.”

“I think that report is a cover-up for the supervisors,” said Gregorio Natividad, 52, an inspector with more than 20 years of meat-inspection experience.

“The report?” asked another inspector who requested anonymity. “It’s not true. The inspectors (in internal Food Safety and Inspection Service interviews) never came out and said what the problems really are.” He noted that the report failed to mention possible dealings between plant management and supervising veterinarians.

When inspectors talked about payoffs, they were cautious in mentioning specific names, dates and places. But they spoke freely about circumstances that led them to suspected payoffs.

Corruption Charged

Gee said he can make his decisions stick with small firms but not with large ones, and he blames corruption, including collusion, for creating the major part of the problem.

“For example, I have seen gifts of meat presented to supervisors,” he said, adding that he testified about these to the inspector general. “I also informed the inspector general of a current example where I suspect bribery in the continued failure to reject or even test beef with symptoms of measles.

“I’m not saying that all supervisors in the area where I work are bad. But, then again, you have those rats under the table. I’m a manager sitting in a plant. If I buy your lunch every day or do little favors here and there, give you a special parking place and go along with you, you naturally are going to tell that inspector, ‘Hey, take it easy.’ ”

Government Accountability Project’s Devine blamed “low-level bribery” as one of the causes of the breakdown in meat inspection in Southern California. He said that interviews conducted by his organization disclosed that payoffs with meat, gasoline or favors are common and added, “Everyone is aware of the problem.”

Afraid to Talk

But according to the inspectors, most of their fellow workers are afraid to speak up, not only about possible payoffs but about the propensity of some of their supervising veterinarians to side with plant managers and owners.

“A lot of inspectors just do their job and go home,” Esquer said. “They don’t let nothing bother them. But we have people like me and a few others that are bothered by what we see going on. Nobody’s doing anything about it, and nobody gives a damn. When you say anything, you’re a troublemaker: ‘Why don’t you just do your work and go home?’

“A lot of veterinarians are plant-oriented. They act like they’re working for the plant. We inspectors are supposed to enforce the regulations. Then if you try to enforce them, they say, ‘Oh, back off!’ And if an inspector insists on doing the job, you’re a troublemaker. Or they will transfer you out of a plant.

“Nobody gives a damn anymore. Some people even hate to go to work. And as the years go by, it’s getting worse.”

Blames Reprisal

Eduardo Delgado, 38, a kill floor inspector since 1978, said he began protesting the “routine violations of law” when he saw chicken fat--destined for baby food--contaminated with fecal matter and human spittle. He blames a recent five-day suspension on management’s “reprisal for my active whistle-blowing dissent.”

“Contrary to our mission,” Delgado said in an affidavit, “USDA local, area and regional managements have bent over backwards to let the plant owners and managers have a free reign over USDA inspectors who attempt to enforce the law.

“My major concern is the large amount of contaminated and condemnable meat product that is daily being passed into the food chain. This food product is being sold to unsuspecting consumers as wholesome, USDA-inspected meat product.”

While working at slaughter plants in the Chino area, Delgado reported finding floor scrapings ground into hamburger; dead animals with rigor mortis dragged into a plant for processing and mixed with meat from healthy animals; edible product contaminated with fecal matter splattered around the kill floor; human sewage backed up on the kill floor from a defective toilet, and a lack of manpower to properly inspect cattle before slaughter.

Unheeded Reports

Many times, when inspectors attempt to enforce sanitation procedures, their reports go unanswered by their supervisors, according to Delgado.

Inspector Gee estimated that more than 60% of the substandard meat--some of it diseased--goes undetected in Southern California.

“Supervisors have ordered me not to condemn meat for fecal contamination and threatened to have me removed when I asked company management to stop the line and the beef carcasses on it,” Gee said. “The employees at the plant were working without cleaning pus from their hands, aprons and equipment.”

In Gee’s opinion, the level of sanitation is “flatly unacceptable.” At some of the larger Los Angeles-area plants, he said, veterinarians and inspectors sometimes do not make required sanitation checks and they falsify reports.

“The most pervasive problem has been rats,” Gee said in an affidavit. “I’m not talking about occasional traces of rats. The rat droppings were so prevalent they could be noticed without any special equipment. Most noticeable were the rats themselves. They were huge--up to a foot long--and workers killed them with sticks.”

Carelessness, Resistance

According to the inspectors, the task of assuring wholesome products is often made more difficult in some Southern California plants by employee carelessness and resistance to inspectors and the USDA regulations they are charged with enforcing.

“They wouldn’t cut away nothing if we didn’t tell them to,” Esquer said. “Believe me, they wouldn’t. We try to make them trim it if we see it, but if we turn our back, they’ll wash it in a minute.”

After he was physically attacked while inspecting last year, Gee said, he spent several weeks in painful recovery and was disciplined on his return to work for supposedly talking to the plant employee who assaulted him. Gee blamed his treatment on reprisal by supervisors for performing his duties.

“When you do your job, they don’t want you,” Gee said. “And even my own people are against me. They won’t back you up because they don’t want the trouble. . . . From what I gather, they don’t want me talking to anybody around the kill floor. Well, my immediate supervisor is not there 90% of the time. He’s next door. Or he’s sitting in the office, maybe reading the paper, working the crossword puzzle.

Communication Problem

“I try to communicate with the foreman. I say, ‘Look, we have to do this.’ You have to explain what the problem is and if he believes it, OK, fine, then we go along and we do it. But they don’t want to do it because you have hostile people working on the floor. They don’t want to do anything. All they want to do is go, go, go and go home early. They don’t care nothing about beef.”

The pressure on the inspector never lets up, Delgado said.

“The plant workers want to go fast to get more product,” he said. “They don’t care if it’s clean or adulterated. Just get it out. By the time it gets to the public, it will be ground. It will be wiped off, not trimmed off. You won’t see it.

“It says USDA. It’s acceptable. Right? Propaganda!”

If an inspector insists on doing his job, Delgado said, a supervising veterinarian often will side with management. “Basically, what we have is very lazy supervision. They just want to sit in the office. They don’t want any troubles at all. No hassles. They just want it to run smoothly at any cost,” he said.

‘Too Many Foreigners’

“We are hiring too many foreigners as supervisors. . . . We get foreigners who do not know our culture. It’s easy to intimidate them. They have been involved in a humbling-type culture where it’s caste or religion--whatever. They figure if this man has the title of owner, he has the final say in everything.”

Delgado ranked poor supervision with the lack of training of inspectors. He pointed out that he has been trained in poultry inspection but not in beef inspection. Yet, he said, he has been assigned to slaughtering plants processing red meat.

Gee complained that “we don’t have control” because there is a shortage of inspectors and because many have not been trained properly. “In one case of which I’m aware, a new inspector only received approximately two hours of training and that from another inspector,” he said.

Esquer contended that the area inspection force is understaffed, despite what the report writers concluded. “You get half-assed inspection because we’re short handed. Sure, maybe on paper, there are 400 inspectors and 400 positions, but if you have nine people off work, then you’re short. We have no extras,” she said. “The USDA hires anybody without knowledge or anything.”

Variety of Abuse

In 23 years as a meat inspector--17 of them in Southern California--Natividad has been fired and reinstated, arrested on meat-stealing charges and acquitted, pushed, threatened and called a “Mexican son of a bitch” by a plant owner who threw government tags in his face--all, according to the quiet-spoken Rosemead resident, because he insisted on doing his job properly.

Natividad attributed his health problem, diagnosed as high blood pressure and a recent heart attack or mild stroke, to “years of harassment by plant owners and agency managements.” He has applied for disability retirement.

In a recent affidavit, Natividad said he believes that the “poor quality of USDA meat inspections” is a threat to public health. “Based on my experience in Los Angeles . . . my advice to the public is not to eat meat,” he said. “In almost every case, the public was compromised when agency management refused to support inspectors who challenged unsanitary conditions.”

Natividad blamed former supervisors for his arrest in August, 1983. After repeatedly tagging mislabeled and substandard meat at a plant and then finding it had disappeared the next day, Natividad said, he put a condemned product in the trunk of his car to secure it because the plant did not have a holding cage.

Handcuffed and Jailed

When he went to find plant management, the inspector said, he was arrested and accused of stealing meat. And he was handcuffed and taken to jail when his supervisor refused to go to the plant to check the condition of the meat in Natividad’s car.

Although he was later acquitted of the stealing charge, Natividad said that when he returned to work, he was placed under internal investigation by his own agency. “First, I was abandoned and then I was punished and investigated further,” he said.

Natividad remains unconvinced that the breakdown in Southern California meat inspection will be corrected because of the special review. “If I was to return to work,” he said, “I’ll bet I could find many things wrong.”