Safe Food_ Bacteria, Biotechnology, and Bioterrorism - Marion Nestle [70]
In response, the USDA said, “No food safety or non-food safety defects are acceptable to FSIS. While no system is perfect, the models project is an effort to reduce and eliminate defects that pass through traditional inspection.”65
Although further court action allowed the USDA to continue to test alternative inspection methods, studies continued to reveal serious flaws in food safety at the plants using the model systems. The USDA’s own studies showed that 13 of 16 plants had higher rates of Salmonella contamination under the new system (but lower rates of problems with E. coli O157:H7).66 The most obvious interpretation of such dismal results is that neither the plants nor the USDA nor its inspectors were sufficiently committed to doing what is necessary to protect the public and reduce foodborne illness.
No matter how the model projects and court cases eventually resolve, they reveal how strongly HACCP conflicts with entrenched views. Inspectors worry about protecting their jobs; some consumer groups distrust the industry’s willingness to develop and monitor HACCP controls appropriately; the USDA is caught between Congress, the industry, and the courts; and each component of the meat and poultry food chain—producers, processors, retailers, and consumers—believes that responsibility for food safety belongs elsewhere. If nothing else, the legal battles over HACCP implementation make it clear that nothing less than a complete overhaul of the existing food safety system can fix the problems and provide adequate oversight.
THE CULTURE GAP: MEAT INDUSTRY VERSUS INSPECTORS
The persistence of some segments of the meat industry in opposing pathogen testing can be explained by economic interests, of course, but also by the cultural tradition of individualistic, antigovernment attitudes reflected in images of cowboys riding herd on cattle in remote areas of the West. The industry culture also reflects what the meat industry itself is about—the slaughter of animals for food. As Upton Sinclair so graphically explained, much of the work of this industry is “stupefying and brutalizing.” Despite reforms, more recent observers like Eric Schlosser continue to find this work repetitive, filthy, and terribly dangerous.67
Although meat producers and inspectors both oppose one or another aspect of USDA regulations, their common opposition does not unite them. On the contrary, the inspectors despise the industry for supporting self-inspection (albeit without testing for pathogens), and the industry does little to discourage—worse, actively encourages—open hostility, not only to the USDA regulations, but also to the individual inspectors who enforce them. In June 2000, in an extreme example of such hostility, the owner of the Santos Linguisa sausage factory in San Leandro, California, opened fire on four state and federal meat inspectors, wounding three of them; he then reloaded and killed three of them execution style with shots to the head. HACCP requirements for the plant had taken effect that January, and inspectors subsequently identified repeated failings of temperature control points and other problems. The plant’s owner, Stuart Alexander, was known to have threatened the meat inspectors. He posted their photographs in the plant and displayed this sign outside its walls: “To all our great customers, the U.S.D.A. is coming into our plant harassing my employees and me, making it impossible to make our great product. Gee, if all meat plants could be in business for 79 years without one complaint, the meat inspectors would not have jobs. Therefore, we are taking legal action against them.” Evidence presented to a grand jury included a video of the shootings and electronic mail messages from Mr. Alexander. One example: “I’m taking action against these government slime balls. . . . They messed with the wrong guy this time, baby.”68
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