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to order the USDA to participate in “negotiated rulemaking,” a process that would require the department to work closely with meat producers to make the regulations mutually acceptable. To observers offended by the idea that the industry would define its own regulations, the purpose of negotiated rule-making seemed clear—to postpone or eliminate HACCP. Representative George Brown (Dem-CA), explained: “The House Agriculture Committee would like to write more industry-friendly legislation and cut the USDA regulations off at the pass.”8

The congressman who introduced the anti-HACCP funding amendment, James Walsh (Rep-NY), chaired the appropriations subcommittee for agriculture. Mr. Walsh seemed to be acting on behalf of the meat industry—a lawyer for the National Meat Association had participated in drafting his amendment.9 In a further action, Senator Robert Dole (Rep-KS), then majority leader and already campaigning for president, introduced a regulatory reform bill that would require federal agencies to review new regulations likely to cost industry more than $50 million annually, and to demonstrate that the benefits of such regulations would outweigh their costs. One purpose of the Dole bill was to stop government from regulating food safety. It contained provisions to (1) eliminate rules for pathogen testing, (2) postpone seafood inspection, (3) repeal the Delaney clause in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (which precluded use of carcinogenic food additives), (4) permit use of some carcinogenic pesticides, and (5) privatize approvals of food additives.

Such blatantly consumer-unfriendly legislation was ripe for satire, and figure 7 presents one such pointed commentary, in this case, from political cartoonist Garry Trudeau. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader observed that the Dole bill represented nothing less than a “big business takeover of the U.S. government in its health and safety responsibilities.” Nevertheless, after contentious debate, the Senate passed various amendments to the Dole bill as part of the Republicans’ Contract with America. As if to soften the bill’s evident purpose, one such amendment expressed “the sense of the Senate that nothing in the bill is intended to delay the timely promulgation of any regulations that would meet a human health or safety threat.”10

Mr. Walsh’s industry-driven appropriations amendment was also under consideration, but the New York Times urged opposition: “By voting to defeat Mr. Walsh’s amendment today, the Appropriations Committee would send a welcome signal that it cares more about protecting constituents’ health than about pleasing the meat and poultry industries.” Consumer advocates from the Washington, DC–based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) wrote that the Walsh proposal was “just a smoke screen to give businesses free rein to do business as usual—even if that means killing innocent children.”11

Late in June, the House committee passed the Walsh amendment, making it clear that it was doing so to give “meat packers a chance to win relief from new food-safety regulations.”12 This meant that if the Senate also passed the amendment, the USDA would not be able to issue HACCP rules until it completed its “negotiated rulemaking” conversations with meat and poultry processors. This possibility inspired further editorial comment in the New York Times:

FIGURE 7. The political cartoonist Garry Trudeau had this to say about Senator Robert Dole’s attempt to deregulate the meat industry. Mr. Dole was expected to run for president in the next election. (Doonesbury, August 20, 1995, © 1995 G.B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.)

Two things will happen to anyone who takes a close look at the way meat is processed and inspected in this country: they will wonder how it is that even more people are not made sick by tainted meat, and they will get sick to their stomachs themselves. . . . Naturally, the meat industry and its stooges in the Republican Party have ganged up on the Agriculture Department (and the American