USDA Flip-Flops on Salmonella Test

The Bush administration on Thursday backed away from a plan to end mandatory testing for illness-causing salmonella in hamburger served in school lunches, only hours after the proposed change became widely known.

Industry groups had lobbied to ease the zero-tolerance policy for salmonella, saying it was costly and unnecessary. A U.S. Department of Agriculture official told one trade group on March 26 that the agency was planning to replace the testing with a different set of requirements, and the department had posted those proposed changes this week on its Web site.

But Thursday, after lawmakers and consumer groups said President Bush was putting children at risk, the White House announced that the salmonella testing would continue.

White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman had never signed off on the policy change and that she had not mentioned it to Bush during a 45-minute meeting Wednesday. Indeed, the Consumer Federation of America, which strongly opposed the change, said Veneman seemed unaware during a meeting last week that other department officials were about to propose an easing of the salmonella policy.

“Somebody made a mistake,” said Kevin Herglotz, an Agriculture Department spokesman. “There was a mistake made and a misunderstanding in terms of how policies should be cleared.”

He said the department would continue to look for ways to improve food safety and would not rule out reconsideration of salmonella testing in the future.

Political analysts said Bush, even if he did not intend to change the testing policy, could pay a political price for the proposal. In recent weeks, the administration also has abandoned a Clinton administration rule that lowered the amount of arsenic allowed in drinking water, and it reversed Bush’s own pledge to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants. Bush also has vowed to open part of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling.

“You wonder whether there may be a death by 1,000 cuts,” said Charles Cook, who publishes a nonpartisan Washington-based newsletter of political analysis. “A pattern of decisions seems to be developing that could put them in a dangerous place--alienating the non-Southern, middle-class suburban voters that make the difference in an election.”

The salmonella policy took effect in June under the Clinton administration. It applies to ground meat sold to the Agriculture Department for school lunch programs that feed 26 million students. Since June, samples have been taken from 120 million pounds of beef, and about 5 million pounds have been rejected after testing positive for salmonella.

Salmonella poisoning from all types of food kills an estimated 600 people a year and sickens 1.4 million.

The Agriculture Department proposal would have replaced salmonella testing with new rules for slaughtering and grinding, which also were aimed at reducing bacteria contamination.

Industry groups said the zero-tolerance policy was not based on scientific evidence. “No one knows how much salmonella it takes to make a person sick,” so any standard for an unacceptable level “is simply a guess or an opinion,” said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute.

Moreover, he said, schools are required to cook ground beef to 160 degrees Fahrenheit, which kills salmonella bacteria.

But Carol Tucker Foreman, of the Consumer Federation of America, said every effort should be made to keep contaminated food from school kitchens. “Any public health officer will tell you that one of the greatest risks of food-borne illness comes from contaminated meat coming in contact with other foods in the kitchen,” she said.

“Is the industry saying that salmonella isn’t dangerous? We know it kills 600 people a year,” Foreman said. “Do they mean it’s not found in ground beef? We know that 5 million pounds were rejected because of contamination by salmonella.”

Dan Glickman, who served as Agriculture secretary under President Clinton, said he believed that Veneman had not been “fully apprised” of the policy change.

But he added that anxiety over foot-and-mouth disease and so-called mad cow disease in Europe already has shaken confidence in the food supply. “This is not a time to appear to be pulling away from high food-safety standards,” Glickman said.

Others said the episode reminded them of a 1981 Reagan administration proposal to consider ketchup and relish as vegetables in school lunches. That proposal also had come from the Agriculture Department and was rescinded after widespread ridicule.

“I think someone thought back to the Reagan administration and remembered that that had been a very heavy burden to carry,” Foreman said. “They had to pay for that one every single day.”

*

Times staff writer Jennifer Dorroh contributed to this story.