Espy Vows to Hire Meat Inspectors, Cut USDA Staff

Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy announced plans Thursday to increase the number of meat inspectors and cut staff at his department’s headquarters here.

“I don’t think there is a department in this entire government in more dire need of being reinvented than the USDA,” Espy said.

He said the department is scheduled to receive an additional $4 million in President Clinton’s economic stimulus package to hire 160 additional meat and poultry inspectors.

The cry for more Agriculture Department inspectors stems from last month’s food contamination case in Washington state, in which more than 400 people fell ill after eating tainted Jack-in-the-Box hamburgers. Two children died and several others remain in serious condition from what scientists said was a case of meat tainted with a virulent strain of the E. coli bacteria.

USDA inspectors examine meat through touch, smell and sight in a method largely unchanged in 60 years. Espy said he intends to make the department’s meat inspection process more “scientific,” besides hiring more inspectors.

He said changes at the USDA must begin at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, where he first plans to streamline the office of public affairs.

The USDA now employs about 1,000 publicists and support personnel, both in the capital and at regional offices, at a cost of more than $40 million, he said. What’s more, Espy said, the positions fall under the jurisdiction of two different offices, which often end up duplicating each other’s efforts.

Espy said he will establish a smaller, more efficient Office of Communications.

The Agriculture Department has made few significant changes in the way it does business since the days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who last revamped the agency. Although times and agricultural markets have changed, the USDA remains largely wedded to bureaucratic habits of the past.

The statistics are revealing. In 1932, 25% of the U.S. population lived on farms and the USDA employed about one worker for every 100 farm residents. Today, 2% of Americans live on farms and the department has one employee for every 45 farm residents.