New Food Inspection Rules Still Being Digested
Weeks, possibly months, will pass before anyone outside the federal government completely understands the 800 pages of new meat and poultry inspection rules recently announced by President Clinton.
The historic changes in the Agriculture Department’s regulations for slaughter and processing plants include things that will both please and upset everyone, including consumer groups, food companies, inspectors’ unions and meat industry trade associations.
Criticism could rise as awareness of the system, known throughout the food industry as the “Mega Reg,” grows.
Under the new regulations, certain amounts of contamination will be considered acceptable. For instance, raw ground poultry with potentially dangerous salmonella bacteria could be sold as long as the amount of contaminated meat does not exceed 49 percent of the plant’s total output in a given period. Conceivably, every other turkey or chicken burger could carry salmonella.
But only 2.7 percent of raw ground red meats would be allowed to have salmonella contamination, a disparity that has angered beef and pork producers.
Even at 49 percent, the new inspection is an improvement over the current process, where any level of bacterial contamination is permissible in raw meat or poultry.
“We are going from a system without any standards to reduce harmful bacteria at all to one that will make companies responsible for reducing harmful bacteria levels,” said Michael Taylor, administrator of the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Taylor said the USDA-approved allowable levels for bacteria in meat and poultry will be reduced over time as sanitation improves throughout the industry. The wide variations in allowable salmonella levels, however, constitute an economic advantage for poultry processors, beef and pork processors say.
“Salmonella make no distinction of whether it comes from poultry or red meat … It still takes the same number of organisms to make somebody sick,” said Rosemary Mucklow, executive director of the National Meat Association in Oakland, Calif.
The testing for salmonella, to be done by the USDA, is just one of the science-based inspection tools that will become mandatory in the meat industry over the next 18 months.
Currently, USDA inspectors are limited to determining wholesomeness and safety by their own sight, smell and touch - methods incapable of detecting microscopic bacterial threats. Central to the inspection reform is a requirement that plants operate under a scientific plan called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP.
Meat and poultry companies, using federal guidelines set forth in the new regulation, will identify those points in their processing systems where contamination problems are most likely to occur. Once those are identified, companies will ensure that they are in compliance by operating within the predetermined margin for safety and by keeping detailed records of their progress.
HACCP also requires processors to conduct frequent laboratory analyses of their own products for generic E. coli, an indicator of fecal contamination. USDA inspectors will then monitor the company’s compliance with the standards - essentially, more a government audit of records than inspectors watching carcasses move down the production line.
By reducing the federal government’s presence in meat and poultry plants, HACCP is a fundamental shift in the government’s philosophy. Some consumer groups charge it is a dangerous deregulation.
“A clean plant, like a clean kitchen, is likely to produce safe foods,” says Rod Leonard, executive director of the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington.
“Federal inspectors have the authority and the responsibility to require plant management to maintain sanitary and hygienic conditions and to operate clean plants for processing food.”