Cattle Producers Hear Update
On Food Safety Regulations

ABILENE — Food safety was brought to the forefront in 1993 when three children died from eating undercooked beef. Since then, some consumers have lost confidence in the beef industry’s ability to produce safe beef and the ability of the government to regulate the production of safe beef.

The U.S. responded to the public’s concern by initiating an aggressive food safety reform policy. The culmination of that aggressive reform occurred this past July with USDA’s final ruling on the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points system, or HACCP.

Dr. H. Russell Cross, director of the Institute of Food Science and Engineering and the Center for Food Safety at Texas A&M University, offered an overview of HACCP regulations and how they will impact the production end of the beef industry at the recent Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association board of directors meeting here.

"It’s been proven time and time again that food safety is good business," Cross told listeners. "You can’t run away from it; you should run to it so that you can convince your consumer that you’re doing the right thing."

HACCP, he said, is the most significant change in the way beef inspection is conducted in the U.S. since meat inspection began in 1906.

"I like to say it’s just a common sense system of prevention — stopping things before they go wrong," he told the crowd. "Most is good, some not so good, but I think the good will outweigh the bad. It will change the way we produce food in this country."

Though the U.S. is the first country in the world to mandate HACCP for its slaughter plants and processing plants, the entire world, Cross noted, is moving toward this form of inspection.

"Australia has since followed our lead, but every country that the U.S. does business with, which is well over 40, will have to enforce HACCP."

HACCP was developed by Pillsbury and NASA for the space program in 1968.

"NASA realized they couldn’t test safety," Cross explained. "You had to prevent (problems) from occurring in the first place. When the Challenger disaster occurred, HACCP identified the problem with the O-ring. Unfortunately, the human part failed. They didn’t pay attention to their data."

Cross said the meat and poultry industries didn’t adopt HACCP very aggressively. Out of the 7400 federally inspected plants, probably fewer than 500 voluntarily enforced HACCP. That’s why USDA felt they had to make HACCP mandatory.

"First and foremost, food safety is everyone’s responsibility," Cross said. "If you’re in the animal industry, then you’re in the food safety business, as is the consumer. Everyone has to play their role. There can be no weak links in the chain."

Perception, he noted, more than anything, will have the greatest impact on the future of food safety.

"You may find that perception is even more important on your bottom line then the actual impact on human health," he told listening producers. "We’ve seen some good examples of what perception can do. BSE is the best example, and that issue is far from over."

The E. coli concerns that continue in the U.S. and particularly in Japan on an unprecedented level have and will continue to weigh on consumer perception of food safety, Cross said.

"In Japan over the last three months, 10,000 people have been affected by E. coli, resulting in 12 deaths. It almost certainly isn’t beef imported from the U.S. but we’ve gotten the blame for it."

Those incidences in Japan, Cross said, cost the U.S. beef industry a billion dollars.

"It took us 10 years to build our markets in Japan, which accounts for about $10 for every animal we send to market. We’ve lost 40 percent of that in the last three months — one billion dollars — primarily because of perception, because of beef’s link to the E. coli outbreak in 1993."

Texas A&M is working in cooperation with USDA to complete the HACCP chain in Japan.

"They’re buying our product, which we think is a very safe product, then they’re taking it into their country and mishandling it, and we’re getting blamed for it," Cross said.

The plan is to teach Japanese customers to practice food safety in the same manner it’s practiced in the U.S. "We hope to have the bigger customers practicing HACCP all the way to the boat docks."

The philosophy of food safety from farm or preharvest to consumer in the home is definitely on the horizon, Cross said; the end user, the consumer, will likely drive HACCP back through the system.

"We’ve already seen retail customers like McDonald’s make HACCP mandatory all the way back to the slaughter house, and they’ve been doing that for the last five years," Cross noted. "Now they’re asking when they can take the next step, back to the feedlots and the farm."

Early in the Clinton administration legislation was introduced which gave the agriculture secretary the authority to take pathogen control back to the farm.

"This was a foolish piece of legislation and it had no way of passing, but it frightened a lot of people," Cross noted. "Hopefully, we won’t take that step back to the preharvest level until we have the scientific evidence and the technology to take those steps."

However, Cross suggested that producers consider voluntarily initiating HACCP-like procedures.

"We do not have a national on-the-farm beef safety program to deal with food safety. I can tell you that Canada, New Zealand and Australia are in Japan every day telling them what they have, and that they have a national program and we don’t. We can’t allow that situation to continue," Cross stressed.

It’s unknown how the Beef Quality Assurance programs in a number of states around the country compare to HACCP, but he suggested that the industry "tie a ribbon around them, find out if they’re HACCP-like, and if not, make them HACCP-like. We have to be able to stand up to our customers domestically and internationally and say, ‘yes, we believe in food safety, and yes, we’re practicing HACCP principles, and yes, we have a national agenda.’

"It’s time for our industry to get out in front," Cross told listeners. "What’s happened to us in Japan could happen to us in Korea and the rest of the Pacific Rim. We can’t afford that. We have to make food safety a non-issue with our public and with our customers."