Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [67]
Furthermore, the USDA continued to test Supreme Beef’s ground meat for E. coli O157:H7. Just two weeks after the Dallas court decision, USDA tests identified this pathogen in one sample of ground beef and again forced a “voluntary” recall, this time of 180,000 pounds. To the USDA, this finding proved that Supreme Beef’s safety procedures were faulty and its lawsuit unjustified. The company, however, maintained that this recall was unrelated to the previous one because Salmonella “has nothing to do with the safety of the meat we produce.”49 In May 2000, the same Dallas judge (A. Joe Fish) who had supported Supreme Beef’s position on Salmonella testing, extended his ruling to other plants in northern Texas; they also would not need to test for Salmonella. The New York Times found this ruling startling:
Under the judge’s strange reasoning, a plant that produces Supreme Beef’s dismal salmonella test results might still be perfectly clean. The judge was troubled by the idea of penalizing a plant when the meat may already have been contaminated when it arrived there. . . . As a matter of logic and science, the excessive presence of dangerous salmonella in any meat turned out by a plant should be deemed evidence that conditions at the plant are unsanitary.50
In the months following those decisions, Supreme Beef again failed its Salmonella tests but could not be forced to close because of the court ruling. The president of the company, Steve Spiritas, characterized USDA’s actions as an “all-out assault by the federal government on our small business.” He charged USDA with “manipulating the testing results, suppressing critical information, . . . [and] using bullying tactics to support a position that a federal court has told it has no legal, logical, or scientific basis.”51 He also pointed out that meat supplied to Supreme Beef bore the stamp “USDA Inspected and Passed,” meaning that USDA had certified its safety.
Some legislators attempted to introduce bills granting USDA the authority to impose limits on Salmonella, but these bills failed to pass. The USDA tried other approaches; it cited Supreme Beef for violating sanitation standards and initiated daily testing of ground meat for E. coli O157:H7. These actions caused Mr. Spiritas to complain that his small business was being held to unreasonable, discriminatory, and retaliatory standards. Eventually, he gave up, declared bankruptcy, and threatened to sue the USDA for its harassing tactics. The USDA tried to have the case declared moot because of the bankruptcy, but the courts denied this request. Supreme Beef, with the support of the National Meat Association and other meat industry groups, continued to pursue the case, as so much was at stake. If the USDA could shut down plants producing meat contaminated with Salmonella, as much as half the meat supply would be considered adulterated and subject to recall or destruction.52
In December 2001, a three-judge federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled that the USDA’s Salmonella performance standards conflicted with the “plain language” of the 1906 law, which defined adulterated meat as “prepared, packed, or held under insanitary [sic] conditions whereby it may have become contaminated with filth, or whereby it may have been rendered injurious to health.” The court referred to the 1974 decision in APHA v. Butz to argue that “Salmonella, present in a substantial proportion of meat and poultry products, is not an adulterant per se. . . . This is because normal cooking practices for meat and poultry destroy the Salmonella organism.”53 This ruling essentially overturned the pathogen reduction portion of HACCP. The beef industry welcomed the