Where's the beef been? - planned policy for meat inspection

Washington Monthly, June, 1993 by Ann O'Hanlon

About the last thing the beef industry needed was an outbreak of killer hamburgers. After all, meat producers have had their fill of bad news in recent years: Scientists churning out more and more evidence that beef fat not only plumps up your girth, but also your cholesterol level; the average amount of beef consumed by Americans dropping 10 percent since 1983; even environmentalists complaining that ranchers have been cutting down too many trees to create grazeland for their herds.

So earlier this year, when a Washington State Jack in the Box served up tainted, not-quite-cooked meat patties, the industry's woes got a whole lot worse. It wasn't just that bovines might devour the planet's forestland in 200 years, or that too many Big Macs will kill you in 20, but that eating the wrong burger might kill you tonight. If federal meat inspection is so lax that spoiled meat could make it all the way to a restaurant table, what's to prevent similar bacterial outbreaks from occurring at any neighborhood burger joint?

That was one public sentiment the warroom Clintonites couldn't miss. So, to their credit, they wasted little time in the weeks following the tragedy to demonstrate that they would prevent future Jack in the Boxes. The solution, announced by Secretary of Agriculture Mike Espy late this winter, was twofold: 160 more federal meat inspectors and a new standard to test raw meat for dangerous disease-causing microbes like E. coli 0157:H7. The plan was right on target--so on target that the media immediately trumpeted the good news on front pages and editorial columns as the long-overdue enactment of crucial reforms. Or so it seemed.

What the media ignored in their eagerness to declare the problem solved was that while Espy and his meat watchers were mouthing the right words, they offered little in the way of a coherent plan. A close read of Espy's "Pathogen Reduction Program" reveals a document so short on substance that it is virtually meaningless. The plan, laments Carol Tucker Foreman, assistant secretary in charge of meat inspection in the Carter administration and now a member of the Safe Food Coalition, is the equivalent of "rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic."

But the Clinton administration isn't the first to repackage the meat rules and declare a breakthrough. In fact, the current pattern of "reform," judging from similar outbreaks in recent years, is the rule rather than the exception: Tainted meat enters the food supply; the government announces a tougher inspection plan; the media applaud; the new plan is never properly implemented--and the issue is forgotten until the next rash of deaths whereupon the cycle begins anew. There is, however, one difference this time around: Unlike the leadership of the past 12 years, this administration is supposed to be giving us more than government as usual.

Steer clear

Of course, the administration can be active in only so many areas, but it's hard to argue that meat inspection doesn't qualify as one of them. Six to eight million cases of foodborne illness occur in the United States annually, and nearly 9,000 result in death, according to the Centers for Disease Control. And of these deaths, more than 80 percent can be traced to consumption of meat and poultry. So inadequate is the meat inspection system that those who know it best barely trust it: "Yes, I eat meat," confesses one Montana meat inspector, "but I shoot my own." Another inspector says that while he does eat store-bought meat, he makes sure to conduct his own personal inspection for hair, ingesta, pieces of metal, and other surprises.

The most dangerous surprises, of course, are the ones you can't see: disease-spreading bacteria. While all meat that passes through processing plants is examined for obvious defects- carcasses defiled by feces, pus-filled abscesses, blood, hair, and the like--there's no requirement that meat be inspected for the little bugs that can kill. Inspecting for these microbes--which means augmenting human observation with equipment capable of detecting the bacteria that cause food-borne disease--means identifying contamination before meat is packed onto delivery trucks. The process involves swabbing the meat or sending a piece for lab analysis, thereby providing the plant and USDA with information on contamination, such as which bacteria are present and to what extent.

Certainly, the notion of testing for microbes is neither new nor part of a fringe-group agenda. As far back as 1985, for example, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) issued a report recommending sweeping changes in the inspection system, reforms which included a call for microbial testing. And then, like now, change appeared imminent. "We hurried to finish the report," recalls Norman Heidlebaugh, a member of the NAS committee. "We felt a sense of urgency. We thought our recommendations were going to be implemented."

Heidlebaugh's optimism was natural considering the unique combination of characteristics of this public health problem: It's big, and it's solvable. It's tough to say just how much that 9,000-dead-bodies-a-year figure would decrease with an improved system, primarily because lower disease rates would depend on what USDA deemed permissible contamination" and how strictly it enforced that contamination standard. But putting microbial testing itself into place is the precursor to those other important regulations.