U.S. MEAT, POULTRY INSPECTION CALLED FAULTY
The U.S. meat and poultry inspection
programs are incapable of protecting consumers from
contaminated products, groups representing inspectors and
consumers charged.
    "The whole trend of inspection for the last 10 years has
been to corrupt and to degrade the system where today the
public is at constant risk to contaminated and adulterated
meat," Kenneth Blaylock, president of the American Federation of
Government Employees, told a House Agriculture subcommittee.
    "The American consumer has little reason to feel confident
about the safety of meat and poultry being offered to him
today," said Rodney Leonard, executive director of the Community
Nutrition Institute.
    "Company management is less concerned about the risk to
health than about raising plant output and company profits,"
Leonard told a hearing of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on
Livestock, Dairy and Poultry.
    Kenneth Morrison, staff associate at the Government
Accountability Project, said inspectors consistently disclose
violations of federal law, demonstrating a "serious breakdown in
the entire inspection system."
    Morrison told of chicken fat for flavoring being
contaminated by "intestines dragging in a water trough used to
flush away the condemned product, fecal material, human spit,
chewing gum and paper towels used by plant employees to blow
their noses."
    Donald Houston, administrator of the U.S. Agriculture
Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, FSIS, defended
the government's program, calling it "one of the most respected
public health programs in the world."
    FSIS inspects an estimated 127 mln head of cattle and 4.5
billion chicken and turkeys every year.
    Houston said inspection programs have kept pace with
change, but conceded that the danger of chemical residues in
the meat and poultry supply has increased.
    He also said that, although he was confident the bacterium
salmonella eventually could be eradicated, it would take time
and much money to contain the growing problem.
    Salmonella, which in extreme cases can cause death, is
found in approximately 37 pct of U.S. broilers, 12 pct of raw
pork and three to five pct of raw beef, Houston said.
    The number of reported cases has doubled over the past 20
years, he said, to 40,000 cases annually.
    "We certainly really have not found an effective means of
turning this disease around," said Rep. James Olin (D-Va.)
    The National Research Council recommended in 1985 that FSIS
intensify efforts to develop rapid diagnostic procedures for
detecting microoganisms.
    But the meat and poultry industries have said such controls
would cost too much.
    "Hopefully we will not overreact by installing unnecessarily
complicated procedures that may become obstacles to the real
goal of providing an increasingly safer, more nutritious and
economical meat supply for consumers," Stanley Emerling,
executive vice president of the National Association of Meat
Purveyors, said.
    Blaylock, speaking on behalf of food inspectors, said a new
program allowing elimination of USDA inspection functions at
certain plants "voids the law in letter and spirit, and must be
repealed or we will see rising consumer fraud and an epidemic
of death and illness for which there will be no prevention nor
legal recourse."
    Subcommittee Chairman Charles Stenholm (D-Tex.) said the
panel would hold a hearing on salmonella June 2.
 Reuter
