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Clinton Administration Reduces Standards For Wholesome Meats Tuesday, July 17, 2000 By Lancy Gay
Federal meat inspectors and consumer groups are protesting the
move to classify tumors and open sores as aesthetic problems,
which permits the meat to get the government's purple seal of
approval as a wholesome food product.
"I don't want to eat pus from a chicken that has pneumonia; I
think it's gross," said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public
Citizen's Critical Mass Energy Project. "Most Americans don't
want to eat this sort of contamination in their meals."
Delmer Jones, a federal food inspector for 41 years who lives in
Renlap, Ala., said he's so revolted by the lowering of food
wholesomeness standards that he doesn't buy meat at the
supermarket any more because he doesn't trust that it is safe to
eat.
The union is battling related Agriculture Department plans to
rely on scientific testing of samples of butchered meats to
determine its wholesomeness, rather than traditional
item-by-item scrutiny by federal inspectors. A 1959 federal law
requires inspectors from the Agriculture Department's Food
Inspection and Safety System to inspect all slaughtered
animals before they can be sold for human consumption.
In 1998, the inspections and safety system reclassified an array
of animal diseases as being "defects that rarely or never present
a direct public health risk" and said "unaffected carcass
portions" could be passed on to consumers by cutting out lesions.
Among animal diseases the agency said don't present a health
danger are:
"They just cut off the areas," said Carol Blake, spokeswoman for
the Agriculture Department's inspection and safety system.
But Jones and consumer groups say production lines are moving so
fast that they can't catch all the diseased carcasses, and some
are ending up on supermarket shelves.
"When I started inspecting, inspectors were looking at 13 birds a
minute, then 40 and now it's 91 birds a minute with three
inspectors," Jones said. "You cannot do your job with 91
birds a minute."
The inspection and safety agency says a survey of pilot plants
using the new system concluded that less than 1 percent of the
poultry examined at the end of the production line and released
for public consumption was unwholesome.
At a public hearing on the findings this year, Karen Henderson of
Agriculture's division of field operations said that defective
carcasses are being approved for human use under the pilot
program.
Raymond Randolph, a federal appeals court judge, this month said
federal food-safety laws require meat and poultry inspectors to
examine every carcass that moves through slaughterhouses and
processing plants.
"The laws clearly contemplate that when inspections are done, it
will be federal inspectors, rather than private employees, who
will make the critical determination whether a product is
adulterated or unadulterated," he said. "Under the proposed plan,
federal inspectors would be inspecting people, not carcasses."
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The federal agency overseeing food inspection is imposing new
rules that reclassify animal carcasses with cancers, tumors and
open sores as safe for human consumption.
"I eat very little to no meat, but sardines and fish," said
Jones, president of the National Joint Council of Meat Inspection
Locals, a union of 7,000 meat inspectors nationwide
affiliated with the American Federation of Government Employees.
He said he's trying to get his wife to stop eating meat. "I've
told her what she's eating."
The Agriculture Department began implementing the new policy as
part of a pilot project in 24 slaughter houses in October and
plans to expand the system nationwide, covering poultry, beef and
pork. This month, the agency extended until Aug. 29 the time for
the public to comment on the regulations and won't issue final
rules until after the comments are received.
In the case of tumors, the guidelines state: "remove localized
lesion(s) and pass unaffected carcass portions."
The Agriculture Department is also experimenting with proposed
rules that would require federal food inspectors to monitor what
the plant employees are doing, rather than inspecting each
carcass individually. They are aimed at bringing a new scientific
approach to federal meat inspection to cut down on E. coli
bacteria and other contamination.
"Absolutely," she said. "There's no system that we are aware of
that is capable of removing every defect from the process."
