Meat, poultry proposals have industries clucking

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 19, 1995 | by Russell Shaw

Producers are responding cautiously to an effort by the Department of Agriculture to overhaul the way food is inspected for bacteria. If there is no agreement, the fur and feathers could fly in Congress.

It's no secret that eating meat and chicken infected with harmful bacteria can make one sick, but policymakers still are grappling with this reality at the source -- the slaughterhouses and processing plants in which poultry, pork and steak are readied for market.

In February, the Department of Agriculture announced a new program that would require all meat and poultry plants to conduct daily tests for salmonella, a harmful bacteria generally believed to be the biggest cause of food poisoning in this country. Plants also would be required to implement several other safety measures and operate under a system known as Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP, probably by the end of 1998. A 1 50-day comment period concludes in July; based on industry feedback, the department hopes to refine the regulations by year's end.

But critics of HACCP, essentially an enhanced program of microbiological testing, say the regulations will be "layered" on top of existing -- and frequent -- federal inspections, adding burdensome bureaucracy that will lead to higher prices at grocery stores. The meat and poultry industries have termed the new rules "megareg" and claim that most slaughterhouses and processing plants already are doing their part to keep the nation's food supply safe.

"For example, the proposed time and temperature requirements are theoretical numbers not commercial practice," says Jim Hodges, senior vice president of regulatory affairs for the American Meat Institute, or AMI. The poultry industry also has reservations about the Agriculture Department's new program. "Their new direction should be replacing the archaic current inspection procedures," says Kenneth May, scientific adviser for the National Broiler Council, the chicken industry's largest trade group.

There are areas of agreement, however. Most of the parties concur that the 90-year-old system of meat inspection, which relies upon visual examination of carcasses, is woefully inadequate. "In the slaughterhouse setting, the current system does not directly target and require companies to control and reduce the harmful bacteria, because removing visible contamination does not guarantee that the invisible bacteria have also been removed," says Michael Taylor, Agriculture's acting undersecretary for food safety.

In an effort to fuse the workable parts of the old and new inspection system, industry groups asked for and received an extension to study the proposals further. "It's important to remember the primary goal is food safety," says Rep. Steve Gunderson, a Wisconsin Republican and chairman of the House Agriculture subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry. "With meat, poultry and, quite frankly, seafood production, the question isn't whether we inspect enough, but rather if we inspect the best way."

According to Taylor, the meat industry will need to spend $733 million during the next three years to comply with the new rules, but HACCP will add less than a penny per pound to the cost of meat. But Ron Knutson, director of the Agriculture and Food Policy Center at Texas A&M University, says the program will be more expensive. "They tend to underestimate the cost for different functions," says Knutson. "We come up with $597 million in reduced farm revenue and $256 million in increased costs for consumer." He hasn't broken down the cost increase per pound.

Not surprisingly, industry representatives also believe the $733 million figure is too conservative -- and that the burden of the mandate will be placed on small businesses. "There will also be a substantial cost in terms of the regulatory initiative for things like microbiological testing to comply with the time-temperature requirements," says Sara Lilygren Clarke, the AMI's senior vice president of legislative and public affairs.

The government argues that HACCP will eliminate 90 percent of pathogens, or harmful bacteria, from raw meat and poultry carcasses, but Knutson says that projection is too high. "Our scientists say it isn't possible to get rid of most of them," he says. "Our microbiologists say maybe 20, perhaps 30, no more than 40 percent."

Dennis Avery, an agriculture analyst at the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank based in Indianapolis, finds a political motivation behind the 90 percent figure -- the "I'm gonna make my name" syndrome. "My big concern," Avery says, "is that this might be promised as an answer to a problem it doesn't resolve. Then you risk the good name of the inspection service and you increase public uncertainty about the food supply."

Knutson suggests that the highest pathogen kill would be achieved under a "farm-to-table" program -- a regimen including microbiological testing, transportation inspection and expanded educational programs. Such a system might kill twice as many pathogens as Agriculture's program, but would increase the annual cost to consumers from $2S6 million to nearly $3 billion. That scenario is unlikely. "In the sense that it would involve more regulation and control, farm-to-table wouldn't be consistent with current political philosophy," says Knutson. "The food-service people don't want to be regulated with respect to this issue. If they want to get control of this situation, they've got to come up with self-regulation."