New Meat Inspection Program
Gets Qualified Industry Nod

WASHINGTON — President Clinton used his weekly radio address Saturday to announce the most sweeping changes in 90 years in the rules governing meat and poultry safety.

The new rules are supposed to add science to the tools federal inspectors use to guard against bacteria.

Clinton said the hands-on system in which inspectors rely on sight, touch and smell to detect spoiled meat will be revamped with the addition of new sanitation standards and scientific tests to uncover the presence of E. coli and salmonella bacteria.

"For all our technological advances, the way we inspect meat and poultry had not changed in 90 years," Clinton said. "Even though we know that killers such as salmonella can only be seen with a microscope, inspectors were still checking on meat and poultry by look, touch, smell."

Clinton said this will change by placing the major responsibility for safe meat and poultry on the industry and insisting that they meet high standards for cleanliness and reduced bacteria.

The new plan will be phased in over a number of months. It has these major elements:

— Each meat and poultry plant must put in place and demonstrate the effectiveness of a "hazard analysis and critical control points" plan to eliminate hazards at every point in the production process. The Food Safety and Inspection Service of the Department of Agriculture will verify the results.

— Every slaughter house will be required to conduct microbiological tests of raw meat and poultry for the E. coli bacteria to make sure efforts to prevent and reduce fecal contamination, the source of the bacteria, are effective.

— All slaughter plants will be required to ensure that the rate of salmonella contamination is below the current national baseline. The Agriculture Department will begin testing for salmonella this summer to enforce the new standard.

— Every plant must adopt and carry out a written sanitation plan to make sure facilities where meat and poultry products are handled are as clean as possible.

Clinton said the plan can be implemented without micro-management or excessive government red tape.

"These new meat and poultry contamination safeguards will be the strongest ever," he said. "They are flexible and they do challenge the private sector to take responsibility. They also use the most up-to-date science to track down invisible threats."

A spokesman for Bob Dole's presidential campaign accused Clinton of hypocrisy, saying his "election-year" get-tough policy doesn't square with his treatment of the poultry industry in the president's home state of Arkansas.

"After all, Clinton's coddling of chicken and pork producers in Arkansas left more than half the streams in his home state too polluted for drinking, swimming or fishing," said Dole spokesman Nelson Warfield.

One of Bill Clinton’s staunchest political backers since his Arkansas days has been poultry giant Tyson Foods, and his first appointee to head USDA is under investigation for accepting favors from Tyson and other USDA-regulated companies. The probe has already spawned several federal indictments.

The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association gave the meat inspection proposal qualified support, noting that the industry itself helped develop it.

"Beef cattle producers and companies have invested millions of dollars to develop HACCP plans and new technologies, such as the high temperature steam vacuum system, to ensure beef and beef products continue to be safe and wholesome," said NCBA president John Lacey, Paso Robles, Calif.

"The implementation of HACCP in every plant will add an additional measure of safety to our products."

He echoed some concerns, however, indirectly alluding to the same issue the Dole campaign raised.

Among other inequities between red meat and poultry, Lacey noted, the plan as presented would still allow seven times as much salmonella contamination in ground turkey as in ground beef.

USDA officials said the new system's cost to the industry would be about a tenth of a cent per pound or about $100 million each year after initial implementation costs of about $350 million.