Assistant Secretary Regulates Industry She Once Promoted : Agriculture Department Official Doesn’t Have Big Beef With Red Meat

Jo Ann Smith is a beef person. She grew up on it and remains a great fan of the standing rib roast. She was the first woman ever to head the National Cattlemen’s Assn. She is a fifth-generation cattle raiser.

Now she regulates the industry she once promoted. But she rejects the idea that as assistant secretary of agriculture for marketing and inspection services, she might someday have to choose between her loyalties to beef and her responsibilities to government.

Meat has been Topic A all her life. Her husband, Cedric, also comes from a cattleman’s heritage. Both she and her husband come from families that have raised cattle for generations. She is no stranger to blue jeans and hard work.

While she had to separate herself from the operation to accept the $80,700 presidential appointment earlier this year, her husband and son still run a 500-head, 4,500-acre ranch near Wacahoota, Fla.

She was an equal partner. “I always knew what Cedric was paying for corn,” she once told an interviewer.

Beef Politics

She was a conservative Democrat--she underscores the “conservative”--until 1988, when she campaigned for President Bush. She ran twice for the Florida Legislature as a Democrat, but lost both races.

Then Smith, 50, became involved in beef politics as head of the Cattlemen’s Assn., one of the most powerful agricultural lobbies. She helped drag a reluctant industry toward feeding and breeding changes that produced leaner meat, but it was a struggle.

“We were very slow to respond,” she says. “You could see the train coming.”

“I really do enjoy beef,” she says, and usually eats it once a day.

“I am not a great lover of fish-fish,” she says. She has come to accept it but won’t cook it: “too messy.” She’ll eat it when Cedric cooks it, which, she says, he does well.

Health Controversy

Her new job puts her in the midst of a dozen arguments, including controversies over meat inspections--the Reagan Administration wanted the industry to do more and the government less--and over America’s consumption of red meat.

The health side of government says Americans eat too much of it. The National Academy of Sciences, in a study that came out last March, concluded in the most comprehensive evaluation ever of the effects of diet on health that this country consumes too much fat and gets too much of it from meat.

The study advised “eating lean meat in smaller and fewer portions.”

“No, I don’t think we consume too much,” Smith said in an interview.

Leaner Beef, Labeling

She said the beef industry already has addressed the fat issue by putting leaner beef on the market.

“We’re producing a product that does not have the fat (it once did),” she said. “We recognized that it was the fat that was the culprit, not the product. And we have addressed that in genetics and breeding. You can buy lean meat.”

At the same time, Smith endorsed labeling the fat content of meat--a position that could raise hackles among cattlemen.

“Labeling has certain strong advantages,” she said. “The consumer wants to know. The only way they’re going to know is to be able to read something that (says) this is what the product has in it.”

Sensitive Issue

It is a sensitive issue. Anne Winslow, director of nutrition policy for Smith’s old organization, the 35,000-member Cattlemen’s Assn., said it will be discussed at the group’s meeting in Columbus, Ohio, this month.

“Proud producers might view the issue as a positive opportunity to highlight the nutritional density of the product, beef,” said Winslow, adding that her own recommendation will be for labels that show how much fat remains after cooking--after fat has been trimmed and drained away. She said the stress on fat has turned attention away from the high iron, zinc and Vitamin B-12 contents of beef.

Consumers Applaud Views

Smith’s pro-label stand and her support for federal inspection of seafood--an issue on which the Agriculture Department has yet to take a stand--win applause from the ever-vigilant consumer movement.

“For an industry person, she’s more of an activist than you’d expect,” says Ellen Haas of Public Voice for Food and Health Policy. “She has an understanding about what can be done. She has been out front on fish inspection.”

Cautious Approach

But on some other food issues in her domain, Smith tends toward caution.

She is waiting for more study to be conducted before taking a stand on whether meat producers who give their cattle no hormones or other growth-enhancing drugs should be able to label their product “organic” or “natural.”

Some cattlemen who have been using a “natural” label and who have found a market among health-conscious consumers say the government has been trying to get them to drop the label.

Smith said her discomfort with the label is that “we have never defined ‘natural.’ Remember that every animal in order to be bred has hormone in it. The problem that has arisen is, does the consumer understand this. You want to know that your label is truthful.”

Concerns Over Veal

On veal issues, Smith dodged questions, saying she wasn’t familiar with them. The Center for Science in the Public Interest and other consumer groups contend that the way some veal calves are raised--kept in dark pens so small the calf can’t turn around and fed only a liquid diet to keep the meat light-colored--are inhumane.

High residues of antibiotics have been found in veal, the center’s Dan Howell told a congressional subcommittee on June 6. Smith said she knows nothing about raising veal calves and will have to do her homework on that.