Is Congress Ready to Approve a New Food Inspection System?

An ambitious Agriculture Department proposal to modernize the nation’s meat and poultry inspection system, which includes mandatory laboratory testing for contamination and detailed record keeping requirements, will significantly increase the responsibilities required of slaughter and processing companies--if it passes Congressional scrutiny.

The proposal arrives at a time when the Republican-controlled Congress is calling for a moratorium on all new federal regulations. It seems USDA couldn’t have picked a worse political climate in which to fix a system that many consumers, government officials and even industry leaders say is outdated.

But even with the current anti-regulatory fervor, the USDA official who has to sell the proposal to Congress and the industry is optimistic.

“There are not that many issues in this country that touch people more directly than food safety,” Michael R. Taylor, administrator of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, said last week in an interview at The Times. “The industry should understand that if the new political environment is being used to lessen food safety, then the public just wouldn’t accept that. Maintaining public confidence in the food supply is critical. . . . This is a critical juncture.”

Taylor, a rising star in Washington and a Republican appointee in a Democratic administration, was FDA deputy commissioner for policy before he came to the FSIS six months ago. He emphasized that the proposed regulations complement--but do not replace--the current $500 million-a-year system that relies on inspectors’ sight, touch and smell to detect disease and fecal contamination in animals and fowl. There are estimates that the cost of implementing the new plan over the first three years will be more than $730 million.

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“The proposal will go beyond where we are and impose requirements that target and reduce harmful bacteria that are present in meat and poultry,” he said. “We are turning the corner and holding companies accountable for doing their jobs.”

The reform of the meat inspection program is the first since its inception at the turn of the century. The cornerstone of the USDA’s hoped-for modernization is Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points or HACCP. Developed by the food industry, HACCP targets problems in production--such as potential points of microbiological contamination--and designs systems to prevent the mishaps from occurring. Each federally inspected company will be required to devise, and get USDA approval, of its own HACCP program, based on federal guidelines.

A second, unprecedented component of the proposal is to require processors to reduce current levels of contamination in raw meats and poultry. The USDA has selected salmonella as the target organism.

“Salmonella is the No. 1 cause of food-borne illnesses in the country. It cuts across all the major species and we have good analytical methods for detecting salmonella,” he said. “And measures that could prevent salmonella will also help prevent other pathogens.”

A recent government report indicates that there are at least 7 million cases of food-borne illness each year in this country and up to 7,000 deaths. More than 70% of food poisonings and deaths, according to USDA, may be associated with meat and poultry products. USDA officials concede, however, that their estimates are low and that the actual number of illnesses could be several times higher.

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Initially, the department will require that companies reduce levels of the harmful bacteria to fewer than 25% of the uncooked product leaving plants. The new standards would permit salmonella on one out of every four raw meat or poultry items. Taylor said USDA arrived at the 25% contamination figure after an extensive survey of the poultry industry to determine the organism’s prevalence.

“HACCP alone is not adequate,” Taylor said. “What is lacking in the current system is any objective performance standard or goal (for processors to meet). . . . Individual companies can and do reduce the contamination rate to single-digit levels. That is achievable today.”

The 276-page proposal is currently in its public comment stage, which is scheduled to conclude on June 5. After reviewing responses to the document, USDA will issue a final proposal by late 1995, barring Congressional or legal intervention. Once it is finalized, processors will then have 90 days to implement the testing program for microbiological contaminants. Other aspects of the plan will be phased in over three years.

Taylor said the food industry generally supports the USDA proposal.

“There is no fundamental resistance,” he said. “I don’t see them going through the back door (to Congress) to stop this.”

Yet a few major industry trade groups are on record as having serious reservations about some aspects of meat and poultry inspection reform.

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Dane Bernard, food safety vice president for the National Food Processors Assn., said: “In its proposal, USDA has not undertaken the regulatory overhaul of existing, outdated safety and inspection regulations necessary to make HACCP work.”

A representative of the American Meat Institute stated opposition to “layering” the new HACCP requirements over the “current outdated, inefficient” system. AMI also believes federal food safety reform needs to be comprehensive and extend from the “farm to the table.” HACCP would only apply to processing plants.

Taylor said that USDA does not currently have the legal authority to apply HACCP--or any other regulations--on the farms or ranches where the meat animals are raised.

“We recognize that major enteric pathogens come into the plants with the animals,” Taylor said. “How do you deal with salmonella in the intestine of (visually healthy) poultry? Or with E. coli in the intestine of cattle? (Science) hasn’t discovered that yet.”

Meanwhile, consumer groups are lobbying to maintain the current visual inspection program as well as to introduce the new HACCP and pathogen reduction plans.

“Meat and poultry trade associations are opposing HACCP unless USDA eliminates continuous inspection,” said Carol Tucker Foreman, coordinator of the Safe Food Coalition in Washington. “Before carcass-by-carcass inspection is eliminated, taxpayers must be assured that the new system works. HACCP is not infallible. It could make meat and poultry less safe. Results of pilot tests should be evaluated before continuous inspection is ended.”

USDA has scheduled six public briefings on its inspection reform proposal throughout the country, including one on March 7 at 1 p.m. at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland.

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Taylor also addressed several other issues in his interview with The Times:

* He agreed that the USDA needs to confront the scientific question of whether antibiotics and hormones administered to food-producing animals have contributed to the increase in the number and types of food-borne illnesses such as E. coli 0157:H7.

* E. coli 0157:H7 is proving to be a much more resilient organism than officials had initially thought, Taylor said. Apparently, the bacteria can withstand some traditional food-processing techniques, including the fermentation that produces dry sausage such as salami. Taylor also is concerned that E. coli 0157:H7 may appear in food species other than cattle.

* Prior to his USDA appointment, Taylor was deputy commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration during the time the agency reviewed and then approved the drug recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone or rBGH. The drug, when injected into cows, can increase milk production up to 20%. Three congressmen asked for a Government Accounting Office review of Taylor’s role in the process because he was formerly outside legal counsel for Monsanto Co., the drug’s manufacturer. Though it got little press coverage, Taylor said last week that the GAO exonerated him of any conflict of interest charges.

* Taylor believes that, given the current political climate, this is the wrong time to push for a consolidation of all the federal agencies and departments involved with food safety and regulation. Even so, he said, “No one would organize a system like we have now. There are some 21 different agencies that have some piece of the food pie.”

* Taylor believes that USDA’s proposed regulation to define fresh chicken as being any processed bird held at 25 degrees or higher is likely to be a victim of the anti-regulation movement in Congress. California poultry interests had lobbied persistently for the proposal, saying that producers in the Southeastern United States were freezing chicken during transit to as low as zero degrees and then unfairly selling the thawed bird as fresh.