Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (18 page)

Untrue to form, the American Meat Institute petitioned the USDA to require HACCP for all meat and poultry plants: “We believe so strongly in HACCP’s benefits for meat and poultry safety that we think it should be mandated for our segment of the industry.” This group’s unexpected support of HACCP is explained by its assumption—erroneous, as it happened—that
industry
inspectors would replace those of USDA. Later, when meat industry associations realized the implications of pathogen testing—that products found contaminated would be considered adulterated and unfit to sell—they tried to block the proposals. Meat producers and processors much preferred a “virtual” safety system: HACCP without pathogen reduction and entirely voluntary compliance.
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Before proposed regulations become final and go into effect, they are supposed to be held open for a specified period of time for public comment. The comment period for the proposed Pathogen Reduction: HACCP rules occurred at a time when especially conservative Republicans had taken control of Congress and were attempting to reduce regulatory burdens on industry. Meat and poultry lobbyists took advantage of this favorable situation to urge Congress to block the proposed rules. They used the usual argument: home cooks are responsible for most episodes of foodborne illness, and oversight of industry is unnecessary. Despite the false premise (most outbreaks derive from foods prepared outside the home), the lobbying succeeded in several respects. First, Congress extended the comment period to give the industry more time to organize opposition. Next, industry lobbyists convinced some members of Congress to amend the appropriations bill to delete funding for HACCP implementation. Finally, while discussions of this funding amendment were in progress, the lobbyists also convinced Congress to order the USDA to participate in “negotiated rulemaking,” a process that would require the department to work closely with meat producers to make the regulations mutually acceptable. To observers offended by the idea that the industry would define its own regulations, the purpose of negotiated rule-making
seemed clear—to postpone or eliminate HACCP. Representative George Brown (Dem-CA), explained: “The House Agriculture Committee would like to write more industry-friendly legislation and cut the USDA regulations off at the pass.”
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The congressman who introduced the anti-HACCP funding amendment, James Walsh (Rep-NY), chaired the appropriations subcommittee for agriculture. Mr. Walsh seemed to be acting on behalf of the meat industry—a lawyer for the National Meat Association had participated in drafting his amendment.
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In a further action, Senator Robert Dole (Rep-KS), then majority leader and already campaigning for president, introduced a regulatory reform bill that would require federal agencies to review new regulations likely to cost industry more than $50 million annually, and to demonstrate that the benefits of such regulations would outweigh their costs. One purpose of the Dole bill was to stop government from regulating food safety. It contained provisions to (1) eliminate rules for pathogen testing, (2) postpone seafood inspection, (3) repeal the Delaney clause in the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (which precluded use of carcinogenic food additives), (4) permit use of some carcinogenic pesticides, and (5) privatize approvals of food additives.

Such blatantly consumer-unfriendly legislation was ripe for satire, and
figure 7
presents one such pointed commentary, in this case, from political cartoonist Garry Trudeau. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader observed that the Dole bill represented nothing less than a “big business takeover of the U.S. government in its health and safety responsibilities.” Nevertheless, after contentious debate, the Senate passed various amendments to the Dole bill as part of the Republicans’ Contract with America. As if to soften the bill’s evident purpose, one such amendment expressed “the sense of the Senate that nothing in the bill is intended to delay the timely promulgation of any regulations that would meet a human health or safety threat.”
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Mr. Walsh’s industry-driven appropriations amendment was also under consideration, but the
New York Times
urged opposition: “By voting to defeat Mr. Walsh’s amendment today, the Appropriations Committee would send a welcome signal that it cares more about protecting constituents’ health than about pleasing the meat and poultry industries.” Consumer advocates from the Washington, DC–based Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) wrote that the Walsh proposal was “just a smoke screen to give businesses free rein to do business as usual—even if that means killing innocent children.”
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Late in June, the House committee passed the Walsh amendment, making it clear that it was doing so to give “meat packers a chance to win relief from new food-safety regulations.”
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This meant that if the Senate also passed the amendment, the USDA would not be able to issue HACCP rules until it completed its “negotiated rulemaking” conversations with meat and poultry processors. This possibility inspired further editorial comment in the
New York Times
:

FIGURE 7
. The political cartoonist Garry Trudeau had this to say about Senator Robert Dole’s attempt to deregulate the meat industry. Mr. Dole was expected to run for president in the next election. (Doonesbury, August 20, 1995, © 1995 G.B. Trudeau. Reprinted with permission of Universal Press Syndicate. All rights reserved.)

Two things will happen to anyone who takes a close look at the way meat is processed and inspected in this country: they will wonder how it is that even more people are not made sick by tainted meat, and they will get sick to their stomachs themselves. . . . Naturally, the meat industry and its stooges in the Republican Party have ganged up on the Agriculture Department (and the American consumer) to make sure the new inspection system never sees the light of day. . . . [Negotiating rulemaking] is like negotiating prison rules with convicts. . . . Children will continue to die in excruciating pain because the meat they ate was contaminated, and because unscrupulous Republicans in Congress fought aggressively to keep it that way.
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At this point, Mr. Walsh suddenly withdrew his amendment, attributing this surprising retreat to a revelation that Congress could in fact work out its differences with the USDA: “We got the personal commitment of the secretary to create the dialogue we sought.”
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Alternative explanations seem more likely, however. Pressure from advocacy groups was surely a factor, especially a campaign organized by the families of children who became ill or died after eating contaminated hamburger. Advocates took credit for the amendment’s withdrawal as a “resounding victory for public health and an unmasking defeat of good ol’ boy politics.” This last was a reference to press accounts that Mr. Walsh had accepted $66,000 in donations from meat and agricultural interests.
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It also seems likely that members of Congress, not wanting to be viewed as destroyers of public health and killers of innocent children, suggested that Mr. Walsh would face a difficult floor fight if he pursued his anti-HACCP agenda. Ultimately, the Dole bill also failed to pass. Thus, one unanticipated—and positive—result of Mr. Walsh’s amendment was to unite food safety advocates and encourage them to press for an independent food agency that would not be subject to such crass political pressures, an issue discussed in greater detail in
chapter 4
.
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With the demise of the Walsh amendment, the USDA released the nearly 200 pages of “final” rules for Pathogen Reduction: HACCP for meat and
poultry products. As with the earlier drafts, these would need to be made available for public comment before going into effect in July 1996. The rules required large firms to develop, install, and implement HACCP plans by the beginning of 1998, small firms by 1999, and very small firms by 2000. To help companies figure out how to proceed, the department created 13 model plans and provided detailed instructions for developing and using them (
figure 5
in
chapter 2
is based on one such model).
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The published Pathogen Reduction: HACCP rules revealed that political pressures succeeded in achieving at least one compromise. Although the USDA originally wanted meat and poultry companies to be responsible for
Salmonella
testing, it now said that federal inspectors would test for
Salmonella
“on an unannounced basis.” Companies would have to test for the
generic
form of
E. coli
(as a marker of fecal contamination) in just a small number of samples: 1 out of every 300 beef carcasses, 1,000 hogs, 3,000 turkeys, and 22,000 chickens.
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This time, meat processors used the comment period to press Congress to eliminate requirements for
Salmonella
testing. Their congressional sympathizers introduced an amendment to the Farm Bill that would create an “independent” oversight panel of food, meat, and poultry scientists with broad powers to review FSIS decisions on HACCP procedures, standards, and practices. The amendment required the USDA to submit proposed rules to the panel and then allow 90 days for public comment. At the very least, this plan would further delay the regulations. The policy director of the House Agriculture Committee explained that the purpose of the panel was
scientific:
“The H.A.C.C.P. rule is purported to be science-based, but it seemed clear that some of the regulatory decisions have no scientific validity. The regulations should never have gotten to this stage.”
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Reporters, however, viewed the panel as yet another political tactic to allow the meat industry to avoid having to test for pathogens. Eventually, this amendment failed to get enough votes to be included in the final bill.

Sorting out the political forces for and against Pathogen Reduction: HACCP is especially complicated because USDA inspectors also opposed the regulations. They had experienced a huge increase in “tasks not performed” just since the year before, meaning that their workloads had increased to the point where they could not complete assignments. One inspector, for example, complained that he was supposed to inspect 16 meat plants within a six-hour period. Once HACCP went into effect, workloads would be reduced (a benefit), but the inspectors did not like the idea that their jobs would change from inspecting animals and meat products—useless
for preventing microbial contamination as that might be—to inspecting paperwork. The on-site USDA inspector at the meatpacking plant I visited, thoroughly disenchanted with having to deal with that paperwork, was counting the days until he could retire. Old-time inspectors quipped that because HACCP minimizes risk but can never assure absolute safety, its initials really should stand for “Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray.”
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The General Accounting Office (GAO), however, continued to press for HACCP, also invoking science as the rationale. For years it had been issuing reports urging Congress to require oversight of food safety based on science (meaning assessment of hazards at critical points and evaluation by microbial testing) rather than sensory perception (poke-and-sniff). GAO officials complained that federal agencies repeatedly ignored their warnings and were still inspecting foods by obsolete systems that could not possibly address modern microbial hazards.
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In the case of meat and poultry regulation, reason eventually won out over politics, the benefits of HACCP prevailed, and the USDA issued its final set of regulations in July 1996—an election year in which the political climate had shifted to one more friendly to consumer interests. Perhaps as a sign of that change, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which typically opposed expansion of government regulations, praised the new rules: “For years, we have had the Government doing the work, the inspectors in the plants, and you hear stories of cursory checks and that’s it. . . . This is an attempt to get away from Government micromanaging the process and instead saying to the regulated entity, ‘you figure out how to do it, you’re responsible, and we’ll do some testing to make sure there are performance standards.’ ”
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An alternative reason for the OMB’s blessing may have been financial. USDA economists calculated that the economic benefits of Pathogen Reduction: HACCP would outweigh its costs even under the most conservative estimates. Although the new rules were expected to cost industry more than a billion dollars over a 20-year period, the economic benefits to society would exceed that amount even if just 5% of foodborne illnesses could be prevented. Economists thought that if HACCP could achieve a 90% reduction in illnesses caused by just the six most common food pathogens, the 20-year savings in medical costs and lost productivity would be $170 billion or more.
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Furthermore, the meat and poultry industries would share financial benefits in the form of reduced recalls and liability, enhanced consumer confidence, and robust sales.