by Bryan Salvage, editor
Overall, this month's cover story on meat safety is a positive one. After conducting numerous interviews with industry leaders throughout the meat chain, it's clear that each link, as well as government, is striving to improve meat safety.
Although it is true that consumers are the last line of defense in preventing food-borne illnesses, that does not excuse the industry from its obligation to produce the safest meat products possible. Consumers shouldn't develop an "overcook phobia" from fear they will otherwise be eating contaminated meat. Even worse, processors do not want to scare consumers away from eating meat altogether.
Producing sterile meat products is not a realistic option, and the meat industry can't control how retail grocery stores, foodservice operations and consumers handle and prepare meat. But meat companies can control what's going on in their own packing and processing plants.
Unfortunately, the entire industry continues to get a bad rap from the mainstream media, anti-meat activists and consumer critics for the food safety violations of just a few companies.
Bo Reagan, National Live Stock & Meat Board's director of product technology research, put industry's meat safety efforts and ultimate responsibility into perspective. "The majority of packers and processors are doing a good job [in meat safety]," he stressed. "A lot of the problems we have are from companies at the lower end of industry, and it reflects on the whole industry. We have to clean up that lower end."
Its own worst enemy
Although industry is intensifying meat safety efforts, it is still its own worst enemy. Last spring, following the E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak in the Pacific Northwest, USDA Secretary Mike Espy directed FSIS to conduct unannounced reviews of beef plants across the nation to assess the implementation of its zero-tolerance program.
About one-third of the 90 plants reviewed had serious problems that required immediate action, and some production lines were temporarily shut down. However, FSIS reports it has since revisited several of those plants and found considerable improvement.
During a recent presentation before a Senate subcommittee, Patricia Jensen, USDA's acting assistant secretary of Marketing and Inspection Services, said 275 federal plants that were identified as having significant problems are now operating under Progressive Enforcement Action, an intensified inspection program that can lead to withdrawal of inspection and closure of a plant if problems are not corrected.
Only 90 plants were under PEA when Espy took office in January 1993.
Jensen added that FSIS' Review and Assessment Office has begun a series of 1,000 unannounced plant reviews throughout the country targeting plants suspected of having compliance problems. More than 200 plants have already been reviewed, and the pace is expected to pick up as spring continues.
Hidden video cameras are also on the prowl.
In February, Federal Beef Processors unsuccessfully sought to block a hidden-camera video, shot by an employee, of its Rapid City, S.D., beef processing plant for CBS' "48 Hours."
If the pre-mentioned actions still won't sway managers of ram 'n jam meat plants from continuing to purposely violate food safety regulations in their quest for a buck, maybe they would have second thoughts on their dangerous practices after talking with the parents of the four unfortunate children who died during last year's E. coli 0157:H7 outbreak.