Report: USDA Meat Inspection System Poor

N E W   Y O R K, Sept. 5 -- Fecal matter and other contaminants are getting into the U.S. meat supply because the Clinton administration’s new inspection system gives industry too much control over the quality of food the government stamps with approval, a new consumer watchdog report says.

“The Jungle 2000,” — the report by the Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based public-interest law firm, and Public Citizen, a Washington-based consumer group — surveys conditions reported by 451 federal meat inspectors at 92 percent of the country’s meat-processing plants.

The groups say the inspection system — begun by the Clinton administration five years ago and called the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program — weakens the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s authority by giving industry a larger role in monitoring safety.

Inspectors Cannot Inspect

“Our survey warns consumers that on a good day, their meat and poultry are inspected under an industry honor system, federal inspectors check paperwork, not food, and are prohibited from removing feces and other contaminants before products are stamped with the purple USDA seal of approval,” says Felicia Nestor, food safety project director with the Government Accountability Project and co-author of the 64-page report.

Under the old system, in place since 1906, government inspectors continuously inspected beef, pork and poultry during the slaughter and the processing of the product and relied on sight, touch and smell to check for animal disease or fecal matter, the groups say. In the new system, industry rather than government determines when and where inspectors are situated along the food-processing plant line, they say.

“Federal inspectors spend much less time than under the old system actually checking food and much more time checking company paperwork,” says Nestor.

In July 1999, the Government Accountability Project sent a 14-page survey with 114 questions to approximately 2,340 meat inspectors, of which 451 responded, says Nestor. The inspectors had spent an average of 18.5 years as federal meat and poultry inspectors.