From: pierce@lanai.cs.ucla.edu (Brad Pierce)
Subject: Beef
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Mon, 28 Dec 92 16:31:39 GMT

Reprinted from Multinational Monitor, Vol. 12, No. 4, April 
1991, p. 4:
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Copyright 1991 Essential Information, Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction of all or part of MM for non-commercial use is allowed
with proper credit to the Monitor.
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REVISITING THE JUNGLE
by Jim Sugarman

A new streamlined beef-inspection system at slaughterhouses is
allowing diseased meat onto the market at an alarming pace, according
to whistleblowing meat inspectors. They condemn a United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) plan to rely on beef-company
employees to perform the majority of inspections and restrict
government inspectors to spot checks at predetermined points on
the processing line. A group of 21 federal meat inspectors who
oversee plants using the system state, "in good conscience we no
longer can say that we know USDA-approved beef is wholesome." In
an open letter sent to Congress in March, the inspectors write,
"based on the filth and disease we see getting through every day
... the program isn't working."

A similar streamlined process was introduced in 1984 for chicken,
leading to greatly increased rates of salmonella contamination,
reports Tom Devine of the Government Accountability Project, a
watchdog group working with the inspectors.

The inspectors believe that USDA management advocates both the
chicken and beef streamlined systems so that slaughterhouses may
increase line speeds. A 1988 USDA news release that the new system
would increase slaughterhouse productivity by 40 percent.

In their letter to Congress, the federal inspectors cite examples
of meat contamination which they previously would have stopped but
now must let pass, including "an eight fold increase in head
contamination, whose meat goes into products like ground beef ... ; 
diseases like measles [and] tapeworms; [and] carcasses which fall
on the floors ... which have blood, cattle feces, urine, ingesta,
hair, pus from abscesses, grease, dirt, spit and tobacco [on them]."
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Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
From: rich@pencil.cs.missouri.edu (Rich Winkel)
Subject: MM: Gagging on Beef
Date: Tue, 8 Dec 1992 09:15:26 GMT

[Taken from the November 1992 Multinational Monitor.  Subscription info below]

Gagging on Beef

A FORMER OFFICER of the U.S.  Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food
Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has come forward to reveal that the
USDA ordered inspection agents to release to the public beef carcasses
that may be infected with tuberculosis (TB).  A secret change in beef
inspection standards has allowed carcasses infected with TB to be
shipped to consumers, according to Dr.  Wilfred Rosario Sr., a 16-year
veterinary medical officer for FSIS in Southern California.

Rosario recently disclosed that all area FSIS veterinary meat inspectors
were verbally instructed on May 19, 1989 to no longer condemn certain
cattle carcasses confirmed by laboratory analysis as displaying symp-
toms of TB.  No proposed change in the standards for condemning TB
carcasses has been published in the Federal Register, and no written
communication on the change was ever received by FSIS employees.

"Meat that under current law must be condemned due to confirmed TB
symptoms is now being routinely released for people to eat," says Ken
Morrison, an attorney assisting the Government Accountability
Project (GAP), a Washington, D.C.-based whistleblower support
organization that is representing Rosario.  "This secret, off-the-books
change in inspection standards has created an illegal risk to public
health and safety."

TB-infected beef has been routinely condemned in the United States
since 1906.  According to Morrison, federal inspection regulations
adopted twenty years ago stipulate that a cattle carcass may only be
passed for human food if the carcass is found free of TB lesions during
a visual inspection.  If the inspection reveals evidence of lesions,
the inspector is authorized to condemn the carcass immediately.

The 1989 order communicated to the inspectors, however, that they were
to condemn only those carcasses for which laboratory tests found TB ba-
cilli on small tissue samples.  Rosario charges that he was ordered to
release a carcass that displayed markings he diagnosed as TB lesions.
Disregarding the results of a microscopic laboratory test confirming
that the lesions were in fact characteristic of those caused by TB, his
supervisor would not allow the carcass to be condemned, citing the new
policy.  Rosario was subsequently presented with a cash award by the
agency "for recognizing lesions of tuberculosis" on the very carcass
which had long since been shipped to and consumed by the public.

Jim Greene, spokes person for FSIS says, "We are exhaustively looking
into the alleged charges....  We cannot comment on whether or not
there has been a change in standards because we are still in the
process of investigating."  According to Morrison, however, the USDA has
repeatedly defended the new policy permitting the release of infected
carcasses.

Department of Agriculture officials have refused to meet with Rosario
to discuss his concerns, even after the U.S.  Office of Special Coun-
sel found a "substantial likelihood" that Rosario was correct and
ordered then-Secretary of Agriculture Clayton Yeutter to investigate.
In a three-and-a-quarter page report to the Special Counsel released in
October 1990, Yeutter, now President Bush's deputy campaign chair,
simply dismissed Rosario's concerns as "an apparent misunderstanding"
of the policy and the terminology used by the agency.

Morrison sharply criticizes the report, claiming that Yeutter side-
steps essential issues in his analysis.  For example, Yeutter fails to
address the fact that the policy requires the release of carcasses when
the laboratory is unable to find any germ that explains the presence
of TB-like lesions--meaning that the test has been inconclusive.  As
Morrison says, "The defense that an inconclusive test result means
lesions may not be tuberculosis begs the question," since federal
regulation prohibits the release of a carcass unless it is "found
free" of TB lesions.

A November 1990 letter from Tom Devine, GAP legal director, to Donald Di
Julio, of the U.S.  Office of Special Counsel, notes, "Current
regulations ... prohibit the release of carcasses not 'found free' of TB
lesions--an affirmative burden clearly not being definitively met
under the new policy."

Yeutter points out in his report that a subsequent culture test of the
carcass released by Rosario failed to demonstrate the presence of the TB
germ.  Morrison counters that the carcass was shipped out two months
before the test results were available.  "The administration's
doublespeak responses appear to be intentional attempts to avoid the
real issues in order to deceive the public," says Morrison.

Devine's letter to Di Julio outlines several questions about the TB
policy, including whether the policy has been implemented nationally or
just regionally; what is the scientific basis for implementing the new
policy; and under what legal authority was the new policy imple-
mented.  Devine says that Yeutter's report fails to address any of these
issues.

Morrison says that the change in beef inspection standards is particu-
larly shocking in light of the rise of tuberculosis among the U.S. popu-
lation.  "The law imposes burdens on our national food inspection sys-
tem in order to protect the public from diseased products," he says.
"The Bush administration has no legal right to expose consumers to any
increased risk from meat that should be condemned, even if the motive is
to save the meat industry a little money."

--Julie Gozan and Holley Knaus

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