Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (13 page)

In this environment, the various participants in the food system blame
one another (but never themselves) when outbreaks occur. The costs of foodborne illness to individuals, to society, and to food companies should encourage everyone to collaborate in efforts to ensure safe food. That the groups do not collaborate is a curious consequence of food safety politics. In the remaining chapters in
part 1
we will see how the initial distinctions in the legal mandates of the USDA and FDA affected their dealings with the food industries they regulate—particularly meat producers and processors—as the agencies attempted to protect the public against microbial illnesses transmitted through food.

IN
CHAPTER 1
, WE SAW HOW THE INITIAL DIVISION OF FOOD
safety oversight between two federal agencies led to a system poorly equipped to deal with food pathogens. In this chapter and the next, we will see how century-old laws affected government responses to incidents caused by newly emergent pathogens, and how food producers used those laws to avoid having to change their practices. Because food animals are the ultimate source of pathogens, these chapters focus on disputes over meat safety, particularly those that involve attempts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to require the meat and poultry industries to control pathogens. Although meat includes pork and lamb as well as beef, and poultry includes turkeys as well as chickens, this chapter uses the phrase
meat and poultry
as shorthand for beef and chicken, and sometimes uses
meat
to refer to both.

I have two additional reasons for emphasizing meat safety. First, as I discussed in
Food Politics
, meat and poultry producers are especially adept at using the political system to their own advantage. They generously support both political parties, form close personal relationships with members of Congress and officials of regulatory agencies, and often use the so-called revolving door to exchange their executives’ positions for those in government and vice versa. When meat producers complain about policies that appear unfavorable to their interests, government officials listen. As noted earlier, meat producers make little attempt to hide their lobbying activities, and their motives are transparent and readily documented. Second, as these chapters explain, the history of attempts
to regulate the beef and chicken industries illustrates issues germane to other food commodities and products.

This chapter and the next recount events in the history of meat and poultry regulation from the early 1970s to the early 2000s. These events each illustrate one or more of the issues that make food safety political: (1) the weaknesses—grounded in past and present history—of the current governmental oversight system; (2) the close personal and professional relationships of meat and poultry producers with officials of Congress and regulatory agencies, particularly the USDA; (3) the consistent and often successful efforts of these industries to block regulations that might adversely affect their commercial interests; (4) the industries’ denial of responsibility for outbreaks of foodborne illness; and (5) their invocation of science as a means to prevent unwanted oversight.

This chapter describes the events leading up to federal attempts to control microbial pathogens through development of the science-based preventive measures known collectively as
Pathogen Reduction: Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP)
.
Chapter 3
explains how the regulated industries reacted once the USDA and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally required them to install and adhere to HACCP rules. We will see that HACCP systems hold great promise for protecting the food supply, especially when they require testing for microbial pathogens. To understand why meat and poultry producers—and their friends in Congress and the USDA—so resisted this approach, we must first examine the historical basis of the close working partnerships among these industries and government officials, committees, and agencies.

Congress created the USDA in 1862 for one principal purpose: to make sure that enough food was available at all times to feed the population. To accomplish this worthwhile goal, the department protected agricultural producers and promoted the marketing of American agricultural products. The USDA interpreted its mandate to include research and dietary advice to the public, and it established units devoted to such activities by the early 1900s. Much later, in the 1970s, Congress directed the department to provide food assistance to the poor and to take greater responsibility for issuing advice about nutrition. As I explained in
Food Politics
, these functions did not cause conflict as long as dietary advice encouraged people to eat
more
of U.S. agricultural products. When
chronic diseases replaced infectious diseases among the leading causes of death, however, dietary advice shifted. Health officials began to recommend restrictions on the intake of fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol as a means to prevent heart disease. For the first time, following dietary advice meant eating
less
, and particularly less of foods containing fat and cholesterol: meat, dairy, eggs, and fried and processed foods. At that point, the purposes of the USDA came into sharp conflict. One branch of the department was advising the public to eat less of agricultural products promoted by other branches. Whenever such conflicts occurred, the USDA almost always chose to protect the interests of food producers.

Thus, the USDA’s friendliness to food producers has a long history. Indeed, one reason for the friendliness is built into the system of governmental oversight. The USDA reports to congressional agriculture committees whose most powerful members frequently come from states and districts economically dependent on food processing and production. That in itself might not be a problem, but for decades, food producers, USDA staff, and members of the House and Senate agriculture committees constituted what was universally understood to be the “agricultural establishment.” These groups firmly controlled farm policy through seniority appointments to agriculture committees that appeared to grant lifetime tenure. The classic example was that of Representative Jamie Whitten (Dem-MS), who chaired House agricultural appropriations committees for so long (1949 to 1992) that he was known as the “permanent USDA Secretary.”
¹
Although the overwhelming representation of industry interests on congressional agriculture committees lessened somewhat in recent years, the tradition continues. In 1991, for example, 90% of the members of the Senate agricultural committee came from states in which at least 20% of the entire labor force was employed in food production.
²
Such percentages alone explain why congressional committees might be more concerned about the interests of food producers and processors than about protecting public health and why they insist that the USDA follow this approach.

A second reason for the friendliness is the revolving door between government and industry. Job exchanges between industry lobbyists and the USDA are especially common, not least because 500 or so department officials are political appointees selected on the basis of party affiliation. As early as 1974, reports identified numerous USDA officials who were previously employed by the meat and dairy industries or who left the USDA to work for those industries. From 1980 to 1992, the secretaries of the USDA included in succession a hog farmer, a former president of
a meat industry trade association, and a cattle rancher—all more likely to grant higher priority to the business concerns of meat producers than to the safety concerns of the public. The change in administration in 2001 continued this tradition. The new USDA secretary, Ann Veneman, appointed a lobbyist for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association as her chief of staff. The former USDA secretary, Dan Glickman, took a position with a law firm that lobbies for food and agriculture companies; although he may not personally have represented such clients, his presence in the firm gave an impression favorable to their interests.
³

A third reason for the friendliness of the USDA to the industries it regulates has to do with congressional campaign contributions. The Center for Public Integrity, a group that tracks relationships between industry and Congress, provides lists of Senate and House members who receive the largest campaign contributions from various industries. From 1987 to 1996, contributions from meat and poultry groups seemed particularly well focused. Among senators, 18 of the leading 25 recipients of contributions from meat and poultry groups were members of the agriculture committee, and one was Senate majority leader. Of the 25 leading House recipients from such groups, 17 were agriculture committee members and one was the Speaker. The center reports similar patterns among contributions from grocery distributors, wholesalers, and retailers. It also notes that among 153 witnesses at House and Senate agriculture committee hearings during that decade, 59 were from industry while just 16 were from public interest groups. One reason for this imbalance may be that the committees do not enjoy hearing the complaints of consumer advocates about USDA’s conflicts of interest or its failure to enforce reasonable standards of microbial safety. By one report, agricultural producers contributed nearly $25 million to presidential and congressional campaigns from 1999 to 2002.
⁴

In the incidents that follow—each a milestone in the long road to better oversight of food safety—we will see how the interactions of government officials, meat and poultry producers, and Congress delayed the institution of measures to control food pathogens.

Our story begins in the early 1970s, by which time health officials were well aware of the dangers of pathogenic bacteria carried by meat. Officials of the industry, the USDA, and Congress knew that the poke-and-sniff
inspection system could not identify contaminated meat, but did not seem too concerned. In 1971 the American Public Health Association (APHA) attempted to force the issue by taking the USDA to court. The APHA argued that the USDA’s stamp of approval on meat—granted after inspection—was misleading. Meat, APHA said, often was contaminated with
Salmonella
, but because USDA inspectors did not use microscopes or analyze for bacteria, they could not possibly detect pathogens and had no right to assure the public that meat was safe. Instead, APHA argued, the USDA should place a warning label with cooking instructions on packages of raw meat and poultry.

The USDA chose to defend the industry with this rationale: because so many foods are contaminated with
Salmonella
, “it would be unjustified to single out the meat industry and ask that the Department require it to identify its raw products as being hazardous to health.” Instead, the USDA countered by shifting responsibility; it argued that an education campaign for
consumers
would be more useful. In 1974, an appeals court ruled in favor of the USDA, but in a divided decision that causes arguments to this day. The court’s majority agreed with USDA that “American housewives and cooks normally are not ignorant or stupid and their methods of preparing and cooking of food do not ordinarily result in salmonellosis.” In the opinion of the majority, Congress did not intend the 1906 Meat Inspection Act or its subsequent amendments to mean that (1) the inspection stamp guaranteed meat and poultry to be free of
Salmonella
, (2) inspections should include microscopic examinations, or (3) bacterial contamination implied misbranding.

The USDA, according to the court, was entitled to choose consumer education over warning labels: “official inspection labels which are placed on raw meat and poultry products . . . and which contain the legend ‘U.S. Passed and Inspected’ . . . are not false and misleading so as to constitute misbranding, notwithstanding failure to warn against dangers of food poisoning caused by salmonellae and other bacteria. . . . No one contends that Congress meant that inspections should include such [microscopic] examinations.”
⁵
The court did not consider what Congress might have done had its members known about microbial contaminants in 1906, nor did it suggest how consumer education might be achieved in the absence of warning labels.

Because some of the judges dissented, and because the presiding judge had his own opinion on the matter, the ruling turned out to be more ambiguous than it first appeared. The dissenting judges noted that “Congressional intent is not helpful in determining whether the labels are misleading;
the relevant inquiry is the understanding of consumers.” Furthermore, the presiding judge said he did “not read the Court’s decision to preclude a new challenge if it develops that consumer education programs prove inadequate to provide realistic protection.” USDA officials could have interpreted these comments to mean that they could warn consumers about microbial hazards and evaluate the effectiveness of the warning, but the agency chose not to pursue this interpretation. Instead, USDA officials said that the ruling in
APHA
v.
Butz
meant that because
Salmonella
and other pathogens are
inherent
properties of raw meat, the law prohibits the department from doing anything to control them. This interpretation favored the interests of the meat industry, which continued to pursue this line of reasoning in subsequent court actions, as we will see in
chapter 3
.

In the early 1980s, investigations by the General Accounting Office (GAO) revealed that USDA inspectors were no longer able to keep up with the recently increased line speeds in meat-processing plants, but the department had failed to do anything to solve that problem. The GAO investigators thought it was high time the USDA instituted a radically different method for keeping microbial pathogens out of the meat supply: Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, familiarly known as HACCP (and pronounced “hassip”).
⁶
Despite its singularly obscure name, HACCP is a thoroughly modern and sensible method for keeping pathogens out of the food supply. Before proceeding further, we need to take a look at what it is and how it works.