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This enforcement gap gets downright absurd. . . . We can use fines to protect farmers and ranchers from unfair trading practices. Abuse a circus elephant, sell a cat without a license, market a potato that’s too small, keep bad records on watermelons, fail to report to the union committee—fine, fine, fine, fine, fine. Yet if you produce unsafe food—the only one of these items that puts people’s lives at stake—there is no civil penalty.40

On the other hand, the meat industry interpreted the Hudson recall as a further example of excessively intrusive federal rules: “The statutory authority sought by the USDA is not necessary and would be contrary to sound public policy. . . . Frankly, to take away a company’s limited right to discuss with the agency the scope and depth of its recall would likely lead to less co-ordination and more litigation.”19 And Rosemary Mucklow of the National Meat Association charged that the ConAgra recall “may be an effort that is not justified” because the meat had already been in circulation for three months.38 For the industry, the Hudson recall provided another opportunity for finger-pointing. Retailers such as Burger King blamed Hudson, while Hudson blamed the slaughterhouses and USDA inspectors. Everyone blamed the unregulated cattlemen, and not without reason. Investigations of cattle-rearing practices found E. coli O157:H7 in feeding troughs, where the bacteria can survive in sediments for four months or more; in one instance, 40% of the troughs had not been cleaned in a year.41 The bacteria also survive in manure for months, and many animals are found to be shedding them at the time of slaughter.42 Despite these and other safety concerns, nobody in Congress or the administration wants to take on the cattlemen, leaving food safety advocates in the USDA without much in the way of political support for controlling pathogens on farms and feedlots, let alone in slaughterhouses, packing plants, or grocery stores.

THE TESTING GAP: “NONINTACT” BEEF, 1999

Chapter 2 described how, as a result of the Jack in the Box outbreak, the USDA identified ground beef contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 as a public health risk, declared such beef “adulterated” under the terms of the Meat Inspection Act, and required the industry to reprocess or destroy it. It also described how the meat industry went to court to oppose—unsuccessfully, in that case—the USDA’s 1994 imposition of a sampling and testing program for just this one pathogen (E. coli O157:H7) in just this one product (ground meat). Five years later, the USDA said it wanted to extend the definition of “adulterated” beyond just ground beef to include other forms of “nonintact” meat—meat that has been pounded, tenderized, or injected. Such procedures can introduce bacteria into the interior of the meat where they are unlikely to be cooked to as high a temperature as bacteria that contaminate outer surfaces. The USDA, however, continued to restrict its definition of “adulterated” to E. coli O157:H7. It excluded Listeria or Salmonella from this definition because these organisms are more easily killed during cooking. The department was not concerned about intact meat such as steak or chops because cooking or searing raises their surface temperatures high enough to kill bacteria.43 Although USDA officials said they would not test nonintact meat other than ground beef and veal, industry officials did not believe them and reacted with “shock, disbelief, and anger,” viewing the new policy as nothing more than an attempt to divert public attention from current political concerns. According to Rosemary Mucklow, who by then had become executive director of the National Meat Association: “This will be an extraordinarily confusing issue. . . . This is just another step in this administration’s obfuscation of the impeachment activities.”44

Ms. Mucklow’s connection of E. coli O157:H7 testing to the then-current scandal involving President Clinton and a