Does Streamlined Beef Inspection Work?

An experimental federal program designed to modernize cattle slaughter plant inspection was sharply criticized by a consumer-advocacy group last week despite government claims that the pilot plan is working far better than anticipated.

For the past eight years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been testing what it calls a “Streamlined Inspection System” as an alternative to traditional meat inspection. In place at five locations, the system is an attempt to improve the procedures of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and its 9,000 employees who regulate the meat and poultry supply.

Technological improvements are prompting USDA officials to consider alternatives to the present, intensive program that requires inspectors to thoroughly examine every carcass that enters the plant. Under the streamlined program, some of the duties performed by USDA representatives would be transferred to meat company employees, theoretically allowing government inspectors to concentrate on product safety problems such as microbiological hazards.

A three-week review of the streamlined program by a group of seven independent meat scientists found that pilot slaughterhouses were making “innovative contributions to fight potential bacterial contamination,” according to H. Russell Cross, FSIS administrator in Washington.

Despite praise for the system, Cross also announced that additional inspectors would be added to the five meat packing plants “to assure food safety.” He said the additional inspectors are needed to monitor progress in reducing contamination and not to appease critics of the system.

The USDA review, which cost an estimated $100,000 and was released last week, concluded that products in the streamline test plants were of “equal quality and safety” as those processed at traditionally inspected facilities.

However, the Washington-based Government Accountability Project is calling for the complete elimination of the streamlined system and ridiculed the recent USDA management review of the program.

“The USDA is once again placing public relations before public health by perpetuating (this) sham non-inspection program (that is currently) covering one-fifth of the nation’s beef supply,” said Tom Devine, the accountability project’s legal director.

The most severe criticism of the streamline experiment came from David Carney, a USDA inspector who is also legislative director for the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals in Washington. Carney, who accompanied the review team to two of the streamlined cattle plants, called the experiment “an illegal, substantial and specific danger to public health.”

Among Carney’s most serious charges against streamlined inspection:

* Carcasses processed under the plan appeared to have more visible filth than those processed under traditional USDA inspection. “All you have to do is look: The food is visibly dirtier,” Carney said.

* Symptoms indicating the presence of tapeworms on the cattle are frequently ignored. Under traditional inspection, carcasses with evidence of tapeworms are condemned.

* Line speed, or the time it takes for carcasses to be conveyed through the slaughter plant, is increased, preventing inspectors from completing a thorough examination of the meat.

* The recent USDA review on the streamline plants was done with advance warning and scheduling with the companies involved in the program. “There was no element of surprise,” he said.

FSIS Administrator Cross dismissed the complaints by saying Carney was not qualified to comment on slaughter plant operations, especially considering that he had never visited one in the past. Carney, whose background is in meat processing and not cattle slaughter, was allowed to accompany the independent review team only as a “courtesy” to the meat inspectors union, Cross said.

One of the major criticisms of the streamlined program is that it is an attempt by USDA to reduce costs by cutting the number of federal meat inspectors. Cross emphasized that FSIS has no intention of reducing its work force.

“The (Streamline Inspection System) will not reduce inspector numbers at all,” he said. “If we have any say then the numbers are going to go up and so will the inspectors’ training.”

Even so, another Washington-based advocacy group, Public Voice for Food & Health Policy, also recently called for the suspension of the USDA’s streamlined inspection claiming that, because of work restrictions placed on meat inspectors, “animals with tumors, abscesses and parasites are being approved and sold to consumers. These physical defects are often important signs of contamination or disease.”

Jim Greene, a FSIS spokesman, said that to equate food safety with the size of the inspection work force was “unethical.”

“Union officials have been using bogus food safety issues in an attempt to keep inspectors at the current staffing level but that is a false premise,” he said. “We have no intention, at all, of reducing the inspection force.”