NEWS ANALYSIS : Hope Fades for Meat Reform

Reform remains elusive for the nation’s turn-of-the-century meat inspection program. With the latest effort to modernize the Agriculture Department’s $500 million-a-year-system on the verge of collapse, any substantial changes now may have to wait until the year 2000.

The most recent defeat marks the third time in a decade that the meat and poultry industries have been able to stymie changes in antiquated USDA inspection procedures that date back to 1906.

For the immediate future, and possibly for the rest of the decade, federal inspectors will continue to sniff, poke and eyeball carcasses for signs of contamination. None of these methods, however, can spot the greatest contamination threats to raw meat and poultry: microscopic bacteria such as Salmonella, E. coli and Campylobacter that can only be detected through laboratory testing.

Until two weeks ago, when several major trade groups persuaded a majority of the House Appropriations Committee to block the USDA’s proposal by withholding funding for it from next year’s budget, it appeared the newest reforms were enjoying smooth sailing. The reversal was abrupt and came after numerous indications that the reform effort had industry support.

Short of a miraculous lobbying victory by the Clinton Administration, the full House is expected to follow suit. Though prospects in the Senate are uncertain, an anti-regulatory mood prevails there as well.

Until the pending Congressional cut-off, USDA officials are proceeding with their plan, an ambitious proposal to introduce a science-based system called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) to slaughter and processing plants by the end of 1995. Under HACCP, both industry and government would use the latest technology to prevent, detect and eliminate contamination. HACCP would be phased in over three years.

According to the House Appropriations Committee’s funding language, the USDA must halt the current reform process, then commission a task force--representing all interested parties--to author an entirely new proposal within nine months. The task force report would then become the basis for the USDA to craft yet another inspection proposal. In the best case scenario, modernization would be postponed an additional two or three more years.

Industry representatives’ principle objections to the HACCP plan are that USDA officials have not adequately considered their views or provided enough opportunities for corporate or trade group input.

But Jacque Knight, a USDA spokesperson, points out that since February there have been six informational briefings, three technical conferences, a special meeting for small business owners and a formal public hearing. At each of these events, industry representative were present in force. Furthermore, upon industry request, the USDA extended the public comment period for the HACCP plan by 30 days--on top of the original 120 days. The comment period closed last week and the proposal generated 5,000 comments, she says.

The USDA also is scheduling a two-day hearing in August to further hear industry and consumer group views on HACCP, Knight says.

Prior to the current reform plan--formally called the Pathogen Reduction/HACCP Proposed Rule--there were two other proposals that met similar opposition during the 1980s. The first such reform was called the Performance Based Inspection System (PBIS). It was followed by the Streamline Inspection System (SIS).

The pressure for reform in the 1980s was fueled by a growing scientific consensus that the visual inspection of carcasses was inadequate to ensure meat or poultry safety. Frequently cited as the catalyst were two highly critical reports by the National Academy of Sciences in 1985 and 1987.

The seeds for today’s HACCP proposal were planted at the USDA in 1990 but the concept really began to generate momentum in 1993 with the outbreak of E. coli 0157:H7 infections, linked to consumption of contaminated ground beef. Heightened public knowledge of the hamburger-related illnesses and deaths brought broad-based support for the current HACCP plan that was lacking the last two times reform was attempted.

Carol Tucker Foreman, coordinator for the Safe Food Coalition, an affiliation of consumer groups in Washington, says, “What is really happening is that the world has changed and the meat industry has not. They think that if this [HACCP proposal] goes away then their contamination problems will go away . . . But they are spitting in their own soup. Pathogens such as E. coli are not going away. Sooner or later, consumers will eventually think that this stuff is dangerous and maybe start eating less of it.”

Foreman, a top USDA official in the Carter Administration, says it is disingenuous for industry leaders to abruptly oppose HACCP reforms. “They asked for this change and they got it,” she says. “But now they find out it isn’t business as usual at the USDA.”

In particular, Foreman says the meat industry is angered with the perceived consumer bias of Michael R. Taylor, administrator of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service, which oversees meat and poultry inspection. Taylor, at the USDA since August 1994, has been called “adversarial” by industry representatives.

Another long-time critic of the USDA, however, says that the action of meat and poultry interests is understandable.

Rod Leonard, executive director of the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington, says the current HACCP proposal is insubstantial.

Some of the proposal’s omissions, Leonard says, are the ill-defined role of federal inspectors; the absence of specific standards for the presence of microbiological hazards in raw meat and the lack of approved laboratory tests for harmful bacteria.

“The new system has not been defined,” he says. “Industry would prefer to know the specifics and I can’t argue with that.”