Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [68]
Less self-interested observers, however, did not see it that way. The New York Times called the court’s decision “misguided” and its logic “seriously flawed,” saying, “It ignores both the government’s broad discretion under the law to police unsanitary conditions in meat plants and the serious danger, unresolved by proper cooking, that arises when contaminated raw meat and poultry come in contact with cutting boards, utensils and other foods, such as fruits and vegetables.”55
The USDA’s response to the decision was to announce that it planned to
continue to conduct microbial testing to ensure food safety. The court’s ruling eliminated our ability to take enforcement action based solely on salmonella standards. The ruling doesn’t prevent the department from using salmonella standards to verify a plant’s ability to address food safety hazards. Salmonella standards alert us that there may be a problem in a plant and that the whole plant needs to be examined, not just one piece of meat.56
Food safety–conscious senators and representatives introduced bills to give the USDA greater authority to regulate meat safety but, as noted by the New York Times, “These proposals have so far attracted no Republican co-sponsors. Even more troubling, the noises from the Agriculture Department suggest that the administration is more interested in satisfying industry’s wish for lax regulation than in restoring the government’s power to shut unsanitary plants. The Supreme Beef Processors decision has left a hole in the inspection system, putting consumers everywhere at increased risk.”57
Lending further support to this charge, the USDA announced that it would not appeal the ruling, enforce Salmonella standards, or ask Congress to intervene. Under the administration of President George W. Bush, USDA officials appeared to be withdrawing support of HACCP, despite its evident effectiveness. Instead, the USDA would continue to test for Salmonella, but would use the results only as a basis for further inspections—not for closing plants or recalling products. These decisions “disappointed consumer advocates and [drew] praise from industry.”58 In response, Senator Tom Harkin (Dem-IA) introduced legislation that in effect would order USDA to follow its own rules for microbial contaminants. He said that he hoped the USDA had “not ceded the fight for safer food to the meat and poultry industry. . . . We must make it clear, once and for all, that the U.S.D.A. has the authority to set and enforce standards to reduce pathogens.”59 Whatever the outcome of such cases or legislation, they thoroughly expose the politics of food safety and the glaring gaps in federal regulatory authority.
USDA Inspectors versus “HACCP-Based Inspection Models”
In June 1997, the USDA asked for comments on how the department might develop new ways of inspecting meat in slaughterhouses and processing plants “in a HACCP environment.” Inspectors were still examining every carcass, but the department thought they would be better employed checking for fecal contamination, sampling for microbial pathogens, and monitoring meat that left the plant. The department proposed to try out a HACCP-Based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) that would substitute such activities for examination of every meat and poultry carcass coming off the production line.60 This time, the objections came from federal meat and poultry inspectors. The inspectors, their union (the American Federation of Government Employees), and a consumer advocacy group, the Community Nutrition Institute (CNI), sued the USDA to prevent the department from trying to do anything other than the carcass-by-carcass inspection required by