U.S. MEAT, POULTRY INSPECTION CALLED FAULTY
  The U.S. meat and poultry inspection
  programs are incapable of protecting consumers from
  contaminated products, groups representing inspectors and
  consumers charged.
      "The whole trend of inspection for the last 10 years has
  been to corrupt and to degrade the system where today the
  public is at constant risk to contaminated and adulterated
  meat," Kenneth Blaylock, president of the American Federation of
  Government Employees, told a House Agriculture subcommittee.
      "The American consumer has little reason to feel confident
  about the safety of meat and poultry being offered to him
  today," said Rodney Leonard, executive director of the Community
  Nutrition Institute.
      "Company management is less concerned about the risk to
  health than about raising plant output and company profits,"
  Leonard told a hearing of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on
  Livestock, Dairy and Poultry.
      Kenneth Morrison, staff associate at the Government
  Accountability Project, said inspectors consistently disclose
  violations of federal law, demonstrating a "serious breakdown in
  the entire inspection system."
      Morrison told of chicken fat for flavoring being
  contaminated by "intestines dragging in a water trough used to
  flush away the condemned product, fecal material, human spit,
  chewing gum and paper towels used by plant employees to blow
  their noses."
      Donald Houston, administrator of the U.S. Agriculture
  Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, FSIS, defended
  the government's program, calling it "one of the most respected
  public health programs in the world."
      FSIS inspects an estimated 127 mln head of cattle and 4.5
  billion chicken and turkeys every year.
      Houston said inspection programs have kept pace with
  change, but conceded that the danger of chemical residues in
  the meat and poultry supply has increased.
      He also said that, although he was confident the bacterium
  salmonella eventually could be eradicated, it would take time
  and much money to contain the growing problem.
      Salmonella, which in extreme cases can cause death, is
  found in approximately 37 pct of U.S. broilers, 12 pct of raw
  pork and three to five pct of raw beef, Houston said.
      The number of reported cases has doubled over the past 20
  years, he said, to 40,000 cases annually.
      "We certainly really have not found an effective means of
  turning this disease around," said Rep. James Olin (D-Va.)
      The National Research Council recommended in 1985 that FSIS
  intensify efforts to develop rapid diagnostic procedures for
  detecting microoganisms.
      But the meat and poultry industries have said such controls
  would cost too much.
      "Hopefully we will not overreact by installing unnecessarily
  complicated procedures that may become obstacles to the real
  goal of providing an increasingly safer, more nutritious and
  economical meat supply for consumers," Stanley Emerling,
  executive vice president of the National Association of Meat
  Purveyors, said.
      Blaylock, speaking on behalf of food inspectors, said a new
  program allowing elimination of USDA inspection functions at
  certain plants "voids the law in letter and spirit, and must be
  repealed or we will see rising consumer fraud and an epidemic
  of death and illness for which there will be no prevention nor
  legal recourse."
      Subcommittee Chairman Charles Stenholm (D-Tex.) said the
  panel would hold a hearing on salmonella June 2.
  

