Recipe for Filth

It obviously takes a strong stomach to be a slaughterhouse inspector, even when such steak factories are as clean as the law requires. But some abattoirs are so filthy, as Times reporter John Kendall noted this week, that it takes a strong stomach just to read about them.

The report was based on a special review of California’s meat industry prompted by complaints from inspectors that left little to the imagination, ranging from accusations of bribery of inspectors to portraits of meat plants swarming with rats and roaches.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has installed a special team to try to straighten out the mess, starting with reports that meat companies have paid off inspectors to look beyond the filth.

That is not very reassuring. Some of the inspectors who blew the whistle that led to the review say that the survey skipped over some of the more serious problems. A Washington-based organization, the Government Accountability Project, which is doing its own investigation of government enforcement of meat laws, called the review fundamentally dishonest.

The special review found 14% of California’s slaughterhouses deficient in at least one respect in meeting health standards; 6% of the total, judging from the detailed accounts, were candidates for closure. One disturbing aspect of the report is that those figures are not substantially higher than what the Department of Agriculture considers the national norm, where 11% did not pass muster and 4% were in really bad shape.

An investigation by the very organization that allowed the outrageous conditions to develop in some meat plants is hardly likely to reassure shoppers, now that they have been told in lurid detail that the federal government cuts corners in an area as crucial as clean food. Congress, if it can find a quorum of committee members with strong stomachs, should make its own investigation. Among the things that it will want to know is whether conditions now are any worse than they were, say, five years ago and, if so, whether the spirit of deregulation that sweeps through the Reagan Administration periodically has anything to do with the situation.

If so, Congress will want to put a stop to that. Deregulation of trucks is one thing. Deregulation of meat inspection is quite another. People don’t eat trucks.