Espy Calls for Overhaul of Meat Inspection System : Food: Agriculture secretary tells senators probing bacteria illnesses that contamination can be reduced, but not totally prevented.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy on Friday said his department must embark on an overhaul of the nation’s meat inspection system, saying the current $500-million program is “no longer adequate.”

Testifying before a Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry subcommittee, Espy conceded that improvements in the program can reduce the likelihood of meat contamination but not prevent it. “No raw meat product is ever going to be 100% sterile,” he said.

The hearing centered on the department’s responsibility for detecting ground beef contaminated with E. coli 0157:H7 bacteria, which has so far resulted in nearly 400 illnesses and the deaths of two children in the Pacific Northwest. The illnesses were traced to hamburgers served at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Espy said that the current meat inspection practice, which depends on visual examination of ca.Sprcasses, cannot detect bacterial contamination. He said H. Russell Cross, administrator of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, will prepare a “revolutionary” strategy to create a meat inspection program more capable of combatting threats from a host of harmful bacteria.

Espy did not elaborate on specifics, but he outlined a number of short-term measures he plans to implement over the next two years:

* Label all raw meat and poultry product packaging with handling and cooking instructions.

* Accelerate federal approval of irradiation for use on beef.

* Improve record-keeping at all federally inspected meat plants.

* Fill 550 meat inspector vacancies nationwide.

* Use organic acid rinses on carcasses in slaughter plants.

* Develop rapid laboratory tests that can detect the presence of E. coli 0157:H7 within 24 hours.

Cross, who also testified Friday, said the USDA may never be able to identify the original source of the current bacteria outbreak.

The Agriculture Department was roundly criticized during the hearing. Consumer advocates claimed that the USDA is too close to the meat industry to implement the innovations needed in its system of 9,000 inspectors, veterinarians and administrators.

Sen. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) charged that “the Department of Agriculture is using inspection techniques developed in the early 1900s; it’s time to bring the inspection process into the 1990s.”

Robert J. Nugent, president and chief executive officer of Jack in the Box restaurants, said that “the current USDA meat inspection system and federal food preparations standards are not providing the protection Americans deserve.”

Separately, Washington state health officials said Friday that 55 of the 65 Jack in the Box restaurants in the state had been linked to the food poisoning outbreak.

Nugent, under questioning from Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), said that he was unaware that Washington state required at least six months before the current outbreak that cooking temperatures for hamburgers be raised to levels that would destroy E. coli 0157:H7.

However, doubt was cast on the effectiveness of a recent federal recommendation that hamburgers be cooked to an internal temperature of 155 degrees, an increase from the previous level of 140 degrees.

“We can only assume that the (tainted) meat patties . . . were somehow different, perhaps with higher levels of E. coli 0157:H7 than usual. Thus the normal cooking procedures were rendered ineffective,” said Douglas L. Archer, deputy director of the federal Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

“FDA has recommended raising the cooking temperature to 155 degrees to compensate for such higher levels of pathogens. But please be aware that even this higher temperature is insufficient to kill high numbers of E. coli 0157:H7.”

Archer said any protective measures can be “defeated” if enough harmful bacteria are present in the food. “Cooking is not the total solution to this problem,” he said, urging that precautions be implemented throughout food processing, beginning at the farm level.