Meat inspection: on the chopping block - new meat inspection system discussed - Food Safety in the '90s, part 3

WASHINGTON -- After hearing fervent testimony from a cross-section of people with vested interests in meat safety, the government is now grappling with the hard part--overhauling an inspection system that has become antiquated and suspect.

During a whirlwind six-city tour of public hearings, the Food Safety and Inspection Service -- the U.S. Department of Agriculture division in charge of meat and poultry inspections -- heard 200 often emotional testimonies from meat suppliers, trade groups, academicians, consumer advocates and victims of meat-related tragedies.

Determined F.S.I.S. officials now are trackling the economic and practical realities of accomplishing the one thing that every witness agreed was necessary -- better safeguarding the nation's meat supply.

"We are wiping the slate clean and looking at how you go about meat and poultry safety," said Jill Hollingsworth, Ph.D., assistant to the F.S.I.S. administrator.

"Everyone agrees we need a more scientifically based system and to look at risks, and there was generally strong support for the H.A.C.C.P. system," she said. "The question is, 'How do we get there?' and comments on that varied."

H.A.C.C.P. -- or hazard analysis of critical control points -- is a program designed to minimize food safety risks by identifying points at which problems occur and then eliminating them. It was first used by the astronauts and will ideally be implemented at all points of the food-production chain.

The push to put together a new meat inspection system began back in January when new U.S.D.A. head Mike Espy quickly called for the system's overhaul in the wake of the now-infamous E. coli outbreak caused by undercooked Jack in the Box hamburgers.

Since then meat industry members and foodservice operators have struggled with finding ways to improve their own food safety procedures as the F.S.I.S. struggles with finding ways to revamp its operations.

For foodservice operators, those changes are not likely to increase meat prices or change meat delivery systems substantially, but they probably will yield a system in which every member of the food-production chain from pasture to plate is more strictly accountable for their food safety role.

"We are looking at what we can do to make the animals at the farm level have fewer problems and pathogens so that they are not carrying such risks," Hollingsworth said. "We are also looking at the slaughtering process and then the retail and distribution level, so there are no breakdowns in refrigeration. And there is a large campaign to educate restaurateurs and consumers in the home."

Although the number of foodborne-illness outbreaks has dropped considerably over the past decade, 77 percent of those that do occur are traced to foodservice operators, with 20 percent accounted for by private homes, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

"Right now we have a system where nearly 100 percent of its resources is concentrated on a stage of food production that is the source of about 3 percent of foodborne-illness outbreaks," said J. Patrick Boyle, president of the American Meat Institute. "So we need not only to do a more modern job but one that goes back to the farms and forward to the table."

A.M.I. is a Washington-based trade group that represents about 400 meat suppliers and 375 meat packagers and processors.

For its part, F.S.I.S. has developed a short- and a long-term strategy for its reformation. In the short term the agency is making the most of its current resources, Hollingsworth explained.

F.S.I.S. now has about 7,800 field inspectors who oversee processing at about 6,000 plants nationwide daily. The inspectors, whose salaries eat up the lion's share of F.S.I.S.'s $500 million budget, during 1992 inspected 6.5 billion chickens and turkeys and 117 million meat animals. An additional 160 inspectors were hired after January's E. coli outbreak, and increased vigilance temporarily shuttered many packing plants.

Critics of today's meat inspection system welcome its evolution, claiming that the current system is clearly outdated and lags considerably behind strides made by the meat industry.

"The system was created in 1906, and it has evolved but is generally still labor intensive and visually based," Boyle said. "Its primary purpose is to ensure that animal diseases do not enter the food supply. This was a major concern at the turn of the century. The concerns today are microbial in nature and deal with pathogens that cannot be detected visually, so we think the system needs to become much more modern scientifically."

Market demand has forced many meat packers to use the H.A.C.C.P. program already, according to Darrell Wilkes, Ph.D., vice president of research and industry information for the National Cattlemen's Association in Denver.

"Modern-day, high-speed packers have systems that can note the number of pathogens on a carcass," he explained. "They've been doing that for years -- particularly the past five. The microbiological quality has steadily been improving from the main packers.

"But there are a whole lot of packing plants in the country, and to tell you all are up to speed would not be right," he added. "Still there is becoming a new industry standard on microbiological quality, and the customers are forcing that to happen."

F.S.I.S. is now working to catch up.

"Track I has a heavy emphasis on research," Hollingsworth explained. "We are reallocating our money, like the amount we spend on residue testing for water and fat in products, and refocusing that into pathogenic programs."

Also for the short term, officials are putting together legislative guidelines to be unveiled later this year designed to improve record keeping in order to trace pathogenic problems to their roots, she said.

And the agency has received an $8 million appropriation for 1994 to further research pathogens and the problems they create, she said. Despite E. coli's newfound notoriety, relatively little is known about its incubation and spread.

In addition, the Food and Drug Administration has increased to 155 degrees Farenheit the recommended temperature to which ground beef should be cooked before serving. And as the result of a lawsuit filed by a consumer group against the U.S.D.A., the department in August will publish its proposed rules for new meat and poultry labels explaining safe storage, handling and cooking procedures.

F.S.I.S.'s long-term strategy is the redesign of the entire inspection system.

"It will be more science based and incorporate risk analysis and the H.A.C.C.P. system," Hollingsworth reiterated. "We do not want to encumber Track II with any existing laws."

One of the biggest obstacles to F.S.I.S. reform in the past has been its army of unionized inspectors, according to critics of the current system. The inspectors generally lack scientific training and are now protected by union contracts.

"It's been misconstrued as a costs-and-jobs issue for the nearly 8,000 unionized inspectors," AMI's Boyle said. "If we focus on this, we lose sight of the primary objective. Over the past 10 to 15 years, the industry has moved toward a science-based system, and the inspectors need to move this way.

"The management at U.S.D.A. should work with these employees to keep them gainfully employed, and if it [a modernized inspection system] requires more inspectors, so be it. If it requires less, then work it out. Just because it's the federal government doesn't mean it is immune from economic reality."

Meat industry members do not expect a more efficient meat inspection system will boost the price of meat products, especially since many packing plants already use H.A.C.C.P. or other risk-control systems, like total quality management, TQM.

"Many plants have already absorbed these costs," A.M.I.'s Boyle said. "Others say H.A.C.C.P. is not costly to initiate."

N.C.A.'s Wilkes agreed.

"There shouldn't be an effect on price," he noted. "A more efficient system shouldn't be more expensive."

As F.S.I.S. continues its efforts to improve, so will the meat industry.

"The inspection as it's being reformed will become better in our view," Wilkes said. "The idea and the hope is we would reduce the bacteria load right at that point. I think you can also anticipate continuously improving packaging and boxing. It won't break open, and different polymers will be used for plastic bags."

But no matter how clean a product is when it leaves the plant, all other players in the production chain must also be diligent -- especially restaurateurs, warned Gary Smith, Ph.D., a member of the Animal Sciences Department at Colorado State University.

"Fast food's problems are the $4.65-per-hour employees who just don't understand," he said.

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