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“Second, we have learned that Wampler Foods was conducting its own environmental tests for Listeria at its plant but failed to disclose this information to USDA inspectors at the time of the testing. . . . As a matter of responsible corporate conduct, Wampler Foods should have shared results of its Listeria testing with the USDA.” (In a separate nine-page letter to Veneman, Waxman laid out the concerns raised by Vincent Erthal, whom he had interviewed. He also urged Veneman to ensure that Erthal is not subjected to any “retaliatory action.”)

Waxman wasn’t entirely alone. Long before the public learned Wampler’s Franconia plant was contaminated with Listeria, Iowa Democratic senator Tom Harkin was trying to shovel some of the bacteria out of the USDA’s Augean Stables. Harkin is a red-stater with a good record on food safety. He is also the ranking Democrat on the Senate ag committee and has been pushing two bills that would allow the USDA to conduct microbial inspections of meat and poultry plants and to allow for mandatory recalls. The government can recall infant cribs, toys, cars, and insecticides but not tainted beef, said a member of Harkin’s staff. That authority was removed by a court decision in Texas. Dallas-based Supreme Beef Processors won a suit against the USDA and stopped government testing of beef for Salmonella. (Someday the other forty-nine states are going to wise up and secede.) The decision was upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court—one of the most conservative appeals benches in the country, which Bush has set out to move even farther to the right with his appointments of Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen.

Harkin proposes measures that would give the USDA a mandate to test for microbes; to provide for mandatory recall of tainted meat; and to institute fines on irresponsible slaughterhouse operators. His legislation also requires plant supervisors to inform the secretary of agriculture if a plant is shipping products that don’t meet safety standards. The Bush administration opposed all of these proposals. The Bushies also quietly dropped the Clintonites’ appeal to the Supreme Court of the Supreme Beef decision that has stopped the USDA’s microbial testing of meat products.

Harkin scheduled oversight hearings for January 2003 to take a close look at the USDA’s food-safety practices. The hearings would have allowed him to ask other questions, such as why almost all of the professional staff at the USDA’s Office of Public Health and Science have left their jobs, and how Secretary Veneman and Undersecretary Murano intend to use the office.

We often lament the lack of real differences between Democrats and Republicans, but we must acknowledge that food safety is one place where the differences are large and evident. Clinton shook up the USDA. He made radical (considering the history of the department and the power of the meat and poultry industry) changes. He separated the marketing and inspection departments, noting that there is a self-evident conflict of interest between people whose job it is to promote meat products and others whose job it is to keep that product safe. He created an Office of Public Health and Science, staffed with physicians and epidemiologists. The agency had always been as partial to veterinarians who specialize in what makes cows sick as it was hostile to physicians who specialize in what makes people sick. The Clintonites embraced the radical notion that someone ought to be looking at the pork, chicken, and beef to make sure it isn’t contaminated.

Harkin held on to his seat in Iowa in the 2002 midterm elections, but his party lost its slim majority in the Senate. The new Agriculture Committee chair, Mississippi Republican Thad Cochran, has argued against Harkin’s meat-and-poultry safety proposals. Don’t bet your paycheck on Senate hearings looking into USDA food safety.

As ranking minority of the ag committee, Harkin kept pushing for increased food safety. With so much bad press regarding the Wampler recall, the USDA had to do something. Two years and six months after the Bush