How Food Safety Can be Improved 

APARNA SURENDRAN / Philadelphia Inquirer 19may03

More power for federal inspectors and a better system for recalls are among experts' recommendations.

The nation's food-safety problems, from flawed inspections to limited enforcement to management conflicts, are not insurmountable. Even the harshest critics of the current system say that new techniques and new authority could provide greater public safety.

Here is a blueprint for change, suggested by inspectors, academics, food-safety activists, and lawmakers:

• Give inspectors more power. The U.S. Department of Agriculture lacks sufficient authority to close plants that exceed limits for bacterial contamination, to issue mandatory recalls, or to impose civil fines.
• Make the food-inspection agency independent of the meat-promotion department. There is an inherent conflict between the roles of USDA as protector of the public and promoter of meat consumption.
• Consolidate food-safety enforcement into a single agency. Currently, two federal agencies oversee different aspects of food safety: the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration.
• Train inspectors better. Too many inspectors understand too little about the science of food safety, while a handful of "consumer safety officers" oversee the self-policing efforts of meat processors.
• Make recalls more effective. Many times, meat is shipped from one plant to another before it ends up in the supermarket. However, not all the plants in that chain are notified of a recall.
• Identify retail outlets that received meat that is later recalled. Currently, the USDA provides this information to most state health officials, who are forbidden to make it public.

In 1998, the USDA tried to modernize meat inspection with the creation of a self-policing system, reliant largely on processors establishing their own contamination-control procedures. Those rules are the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point system.

But Congress has not amended the nation's original Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906 in 22 years, and the last major changes were made in 1967.

When that law, the Wholesome Meat Act, was enacted, "Congress didn't know about listeria or E. coli and was not looking to address food-borne pathogens or illness," said Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, an organization of more than 285 consumer-advocacy groups. Food-borne illnesses are "much more intolerable now, and you need the law to address that," she said.

Escherichia coli O157:H7 was identified for the first time by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1975. But it wasn't until 1982 that it was determined to be a cause of disease.

"You can't hang a modern rule based on modern science on legislation that dates back 100 years," said J. Glenn Morris, chairman of the department of epidemiology and preventive medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and one of the people who helped write the HACCP pathogen rule. "We have come to a point where we have to put in new legislation that is based on modern scientific understanding."

New legislation is not necessarily needed, said Janet Riley, a spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute.

"The USDA is constantly engaged in rule-making, and the law does set broad parameters for rule-making," Riley said. "Just because something originated some time ago doesn't mean it doesn't set good parameters."

But, Morris said, "the meat industry is beginning to create a major challenge based on the inadequacy of the underlying law."

The challenges by the industry have eroded the already limited authority of the USDA.

In 2000, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the USDA did not have the authority to shut down Supreme Beef Processors Inc., a meat-processing company, even though it had exceeded the performance standard, or limit, of contamination for salmonella three times. According to the self-policing rule, plants have to have a lower salmonella contamination rate than an established national average. In 2001, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld that ruling.

More recently, the USDA was prevented from shutting down another plant based on its unsanitary conditions. A U.S. District Court judge ruled that the USDA could not shut down a Nebraska Beef Ltd. plant in Omaha, even though it had a documented history of unsanitary conditions and violations.

In August, the USDA said hamburger contaminated with E. coli was found at a subsidiary of Nebraska Beef. The USDA tried to shut down Nebraska Beef, but the company took the USDA to court, saying that it would lose $2.7 million a day and be driven out of business. A federal judge issued a restraining order to prevent the shutdown, and the company and USDA reached a settlement in late January.

"HACCP is a regulation that the USDA drafted as a way to implement the meat and poultry inspection laws," said Tony Corbo, legislative representative for the Critical Mass, Energy and Environment Program for Public Citizen, a public-interest watchdog organization. "HACCP was meant to modernize the acts."

But meat processors are able to challenge parts of HACCP in court because there is no mention of microbial testing or food-borne illnesses in the 1967 meat laws. How can HACCP be implemented and enforced, ask the meat processors, if it is really not representing the laws on the books?

David Theno, vice president of technical services for the San Diego-based Jack in the Box restaurant chain, was hired to help the company recover from an E. coli outbreak in 1993 that sickened 700 people and killed four children. He has since been credited with implementing one of the best food-safety systems in the fast-food industry.

Theno said the USDA needs to find a way to encourage companies to conduct comprehensive microbial testing without penalizing them when positive results arise.

There is a dilemma, because plants want to do their own tests for pathogen control, but they are concerned they will raise their risk for regulatory penalty if they find contamination, Theno said.

"The USDA and the industry need to work together and share the responsibility for food safety. It shouldn't be an us-and-them kind of thing," he said.

Food safety is a multidimensional challenge that needs a multidimensional solution, Riley said. Regulation is not the only way to keep food safe, she said. Research, technology and consumer education also are essential.

"We have a lot of rules and enforcement authority. We have continuous oversight in the plants where we slaughter," she said.

Research is being done on better feeding practices, such as bacteria found in yogurt to combat E. coli in cattle, Riley said.

Congressional advocates for new laws include Sens. Tom Harkin (D., Iowa) and Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn).

Last year, Harkin, the ranking Democrat on the Agriculture, Nutritional and Forestry Committee, introduced two bills he says will be reintroduced soon.

The proposed Meat and Poultry Pathogen Reduction Act, also known as Kevin's Law, for Kevin Kowalcyk, a 2-year-old from Mount Horeb, Wis., who died after eating contaminated hamburger, would give the USDA authority to set performance standards for pathogens in all raw meat. Kevin's Law will be reintroduced Thursday

"We have faced serious industry opposition to standards for pathogens in uncooked meat and poultry products," Harkin said.

Also last year, Harkin introduced a bill that would give the USDA the authority to order mandatory recalls and impose civil fines on or shut down companies that violate food-safety regulations.

The legislation has a lot of industry opposition, Harkin said.

"It is also not helpful that the Bush administration has backed away from supporting stronger enforcement authorities for USDA and FDA," he said.

But "as consumers become more aware of the weaknesses in our food-safety system, they will demand action from Congress, and we will pass this bill."

In 2001, Durbin proposed legislation to create a single, independent food-safety agency. He plans to reintroduce the bill this year, said Jenni Engebretsen, the senator's press secretary.

Foreman, the consumer advocate, said a single, separate regulatory agency is needed because there is an inherent conflict of interest within the USDA. It is supposed to ensure the safety of meat and market it.

"The USDA is not by its nature a public-health agency," Foreman said.

Though Congress created an undersecretary for food safety and the agency has become more concerned with human health over the years, "agriculture production, promotion, and consumption of food is always the first thing on the agenda," she said.

"The USDA is in charge of marketing meat but is also in charge of keeping consumers safe from meat that is not safe," said Karen Taylor Mitchell, executive director of Safe Tables Our Priority, a consumer-advocacy group.

"The way food safety is overseen now is so convoluted and leaves a lot of holes in the safety net," Mitchell said.

The responsibility for food safety should be given to a single food agency, Mitchell said.

But Riley, from the meat industry, thinks the USDA is fine the way it is. The lines are well-drawn between food safety and promotion at the USDA, she said.

In forthcoming weeks, DeLauro may introduce legislation that would force meat processors to make public the list of supermarkets that received recalled meat.

In a House of Representatives subcommittee hearing in March, the USDA undersecretary for food safety, Elsa Murano, said making the information public would not help consumers, because companies would not be as cooperative if they were forced to share information. The meat industry agrees.

"The most important thing for the consumer to know is all of the establishment codes and the product code dates," Riley said.

But members of the public have a right to know they are buying safe meat for their families, said DeLauro, who will meet with food-safety experts to see whether she should introduce the legislation.

With new laws, the concept of self-policing could work, said Michael Taylor, former Food Safety and Inspection Service administrator and now a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, a think tank that conducts independent research on environmental and natural-resource issues. Taylor helped write the HACCP pathogen rule.

"Bear in mind that HACCP wasn't just another regulation. It was changing to a whole new mind-set. The process of changing institutional culture takes time."

source: http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/5892357.htm 19may03