IGEN is perfect for this meat debacle!.....
New Safety Rules Fail to Stop Tainted Meat
October 10, 2003
By MELODY PETERSEN and CHRISTOPHER DREW
AUGUSTA, Ga. - Government inspectors monitoring the
automated processing line at the Shapiro Packing meat plant
here over the past three years repeatedly discovered sides
of beef mottled with cattle manure, a host for bacteria
that can be deadly to consumers.
Last November the inspectors also found E. coli O157:H7, a
dangerous bacterium spread by cattle waste, in hamburger
and stopped a shipment waiting to go to public schools from
a Shapiro meat-grinding facility. Yet the Department of
Agriculture delayed more forceful action and never did more
than threaten to shut the packing plant down.
The history of recurring violations at the Shapiro plant
illustrates the weaknesses in a new food safety system that
the department phased in nationwide from 1998 to 2000, say
consumer groups, critics in Congress and some government
inspectors.
Critics say the department's inspection arm, the Food
Safety and Inspection Service, has been lax in enforcing
safety procedures under the new program, even at plants
with repeated violations.
Government audits, interviews with current and former
inspectors and a close look at some of 113 meat recalls
last year - a record number - show that the inspection
service has been slow to establish guidelines for dealing
with repeat offenders and has done a poor job of training
its inspectors, leaving many uncertain when to take action.
As a result, the government has too often waited until meat
became contaminated - and people have become sick - before
forcing plants to make safety changes.
In years past, government inspectors patrolled the
slaughterhouses, looking to reject, or condemn, carcasses
with tumors and other obvious defects. In overhauling the
system, the department expanded its focus to include a new
and growing threat from invisible pathogens, and it placed
the burden on companies to design their own rigorous safety
plans.
Agriculture Department officials say they have made
significant progress recently toward strengthening their
monitoring and enforcement procedures.
"I'm confident that when we put the U.S.D.A. mark of
inspection on a product that goes to the consumer that
we're sure it is safe," said Dr. Garry L. McKee, the chief
of the inspection service. "The system is working."
Many meat companies have made substantial safety
improvements on their own. But though few consumers realize
it, the government's weak enforcement has generated wide
variations among meat suppliers, with some - prodded by
wary restaurant and grocery chains - taking far greater
precautions than others.
According to government inspection reports, on more than 50
days from early 2001 until July, inspectors at the Shapiro
Packing plant found feces on carcasses moving down the
processing line. Its meat ends up in schools, supermarkets
and fast-food restaurants across the country.
On 11 days the inspectors at the plant even found the
manure on numerous carcasses that had already been through
special cleansing washes of hot water and acid.
Yet the Agriculture Department did not react more
forcefully to the inspectors' reports until last July, when
it threatened to stop the plant from operating. Even then,
regulators allowed Shapiro to keep shipping, based on its
pledges to correct procedures identified as the cause of
the problems.
Shapiro says it removes any contamination and has never
shipped unsafe meat. Dane Bernard, vice president for food
safety at Keystone Foods, the private company that manages
Shapiro Packing, said that the plant has fixed "95 percent"
of the problems identified by department officials.
"We have not been putting the public at risk and that's the
bottom line," Mr. Bernard said.
Even critics say that the concept of the new system,
emphasizing illness prevention, is a big step in the right
direction. But Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who is
the ranking minority member on the Senate Agriculture
Committee, said that the Agriculture Department "really
doesn't have good enforcement procedures, and they don't
have any clear standards for judging whether a company's
plan is adequate or not."
The department's top auditors agreed with that assessment
in a report issued late last week, saying they "question
the adequacy" of its programs "that identify and control
hazards to the production process."
Delmer Jones, who retired in August as chairman of the
National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, the
government meat inspectors' union, was more scathing. "Most
any system will work and protect the consumer if you've got
two things: teeth and enforcement," Mr. Jones said. But in
many plants the safety plans are still just "smoke and
mirrors," he said.
Despite flaws in the system, the risk to consumers of
falling ill from tainted meat remains low. Cooking
hamburger to 160 degrees kills the bacteria.
Yet when contaminated meat is not properly cooked, the
bacteria can be fatal; they are especially dangerous to the
elderly and young children. Moreover, tracing tainted meat
back to the plant where it was produced can be difficult.
With the far-flung distribution networks of today, a single
batch of bad meat can quickly cause illnesses in many
states.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates
that 5,000 people die, and 325,000 people are hospitalized,
each year from food-borne illnesses.
The government's shift to the new safety system was driven
by an E. coli outbreak that killed four children and
sickened hundreds of people who had eaten hamburgers from
Jack in the Box restaurants in late 1992 and early 1993.
The outbreak showed that food-borne bacteria, which had
long been thought to produce little more than a
stomachache, now had the potential to kill.
The new system, known as the Hazard Analysis and Critical
Control Point program, was meant to be more scientific than
the "poke and sniff" methods that inspectors had used to
search for tainted meat since the first meat-safety laws
were adopted in 1906.
The new system, using research and new technology like the
steam and acid carcass washes, is intended to protect
against invisible scourges like salmonella and listeria, as
well as E. coli O157:H7, which can get into raw hamburger
meat from cattle feces.
The new rules shifted much of the responsibility for safety
to the plants, requiring them to identify vulnerable points
in their production lines and build in steps to kill germs.
Under the new system, government inspectors - who by law
must be present when slaughterhouses operate - look over
workers' shoulders and make sometimes difficult judgments
about how well the plants' safety measures are working.
Supporters of the new system say it brought a sharp decline
in the frequency of illnesses caused by bacteria like
Campylobacter, which is often found in chickens.
But the rate of illnesses from E. coli O157:H7 remained
roughly the same in 2002 as it was in 1996, two years
before the new safety system began, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - although
preliminary figures do indicate a decline this year.
The Agriculture Department urges companies to make recalls
when contaminated meat is discovered - sometimes because
people have fallen ill - after it has been shipped to
customers. The department does not have the authority to
order a recall.
In the biggest recall last year, one woman died and at
least 46 people were sickened from E. coli O157:H7 in beef
ground at a ConAgra plant in Greeley, Colo. In the report
last week, the Agriculture Department's inspector general
disclosed that the plant, which was owned by ConAgra Foods
Inc., had been cited 66 times for fecal contamination from
January 2001 until it was temporarily closed last November.
Agriculture Department officials acknowledged that they
were slow to emphasize enforcement, saying they were
overwhelmed just trying to ensure that all of the nation's
5,000 meat and poultry plants devised their own safety
plans.
Since last year, the officials say, the inspection service
has expanded training for inspectors and issued new
guidelines for taking action against plants that have
recurring violations. Dr. McKee, who became administrator
of the Food Safety and Inspection Service in July 2002,
said the agency had sharply increased the number of serious
enforcement actions, which include shutting down a plant,
this year: 460 actions in the first nine months, as
compared with 267 in all of 2002.
Shapiro executives say they know of no case of illness from
Shapiro meat.
Experts describe Shapiro's troubles as not unlike those at
many plants making the transition to the new rules.
Mr. Bernard, the Keystone executive, noted that Shapiro had
closed the Augusta plant voluntarily one day in August for
employee training. He also said the company had expanded
its testing for E. coli O157:H7 and was now finding less of
it than the government was finding on average in its tests
at other plants. "It is a plant that has problems," Mr.
Bernard said, "but it is not a problem plant."
The Plant
Safety Violations by the Hundreds
Cattle trucks, arriving
full and leaving empty, drive in a constant stream through
the gate to Shapiro Packing's plant on New Savannah Road.
Dozens of 18-wheeler refrigerator trucks haul the meat away
for distribution - some to the Shapiro grinding plant
nearby and the rest to groceries and other clients around
the country.
The plant slaughters 1,200 or more cattle each day, which
makes it one of the largest slaughterhouses in the country.
It is part of a family of companies owned by Herbert
Lotman, a Pennsylvania businessman who created a meat
empire after he developed a way to mass-produce frozen
hamburgers for McDonald's and who helped invent chicken
nuggets. His flagship company, Keystone Foods, based in
West Conshohocken, Pa., is one of McDonald's largest
suppliers.
Executives at McDonald's said that its own auditors, who
are sent to all of its beef suppliers, had found nothing
amiss at Shapiro. Walt Riker, a spokesman for McDonald's,
said that the auditors had found that the plant quickly
addressed any problems that surfaced.
As a large plant with more than 700 employees, Shapiro was
required to begin using the new safety system in 1998. Its
slaughterhouse has adopted extra measures against
contamination in removal of the hide, which may be matted
with manure, and the intestines. As carcasses sweep down
the line at the rate of three per minute, feces can
splatter onto the meat if workers are not careful.
Over the last three and a half years, government inspectors
have cited Shapiro hundreds of times for a variety of
safety violations, according to reports written by
inspectors stationed inside the Shapiro plant.
Consumer activists obtained the inspection documents
through the Freedom of Information Act.
According to the documents, inspectors repeatedly saw
employees letting carcasses fall to the floor; "insects in
the larval stage (maggots)" on floors; and black oil from
machinery dripping onto meat.
The inspectors also reported several cases in which meat
that had been condemned because of disease or contamination
was not marked or clearly removed from production. On March
26, 2002, for example, an inspector asked a supervisor what
had happened to cuts of meat condemned the previous day.
"Some of the meat was boxed yesterday and was shipped to
the freezer," the supervisor replied. Inspectors tracked
down the rejected meat in the freezer and again ordered the
plant not to ship it, the inspection report reads.
But the reports that stand out for their frequency involve
carcasses contaminated with cattle feces.
Inspectors found feces or ingesta (the contents of the
stomach, which can also harbor pathogens) on carcasses on
at least 23 days in 2001, according to the documents - once
every 16 days on average. In the last five months of 2002,
inspectors found fecal contamination about every 12 days.
Like many large plants, Shapiro uses safety technology that
includes washing carcass with warm water and pasteurization
with water as hot as 195 degrees. Carcasses then go through
a wash of lactic acid, meant to kill any remaining
pathogens.
But inspectors at Shapiro have found feces both before and
after the carcasses had been through the washes. From
August 2002 through the end of that year, inspectors found
manure or ingesta on 13 days. In seven of those cases, the
carcasses had already been through the washes, including 20
contaminated sides of beef found on Oct. 21, another 8 on
Oct. 22 and 20 more on Oct. 25.
In their reports, the inspectors described repeatedly
finding the same violation. "Preventive measures not
implemented and/or not effective," they wrote several
times.
This year brought little improvement. Government inspectors
found feces on 12 days in the first six months of 2003. But
the documents show that the company's own employees
discovered far more. In January and May, Shapiro employees
found feces on meat about every other day.
Under federal regulations, the government has what it calls
"zero tolerance" for feces and ingesta. Carcasses must be
entirely free of these contaminants after the animal has
been skinned and eviscerated.
Executives at meat companies say that it is not possible to
keep every bit of manure off the meat and that not all
manure harbors deadly bacteria. "I don't know that we will
get to the point where we don't have a spot of fecal
material," said Mr. Bernard, the Keystone executive, adding
that the company cuts off any contaminated parts. As for
any feces remaining on the carcasses at the end of the
process, he said, "The material would have been
pasteurized."
But some critics say the government seems largely to ignore
its rule on feces.
"The zero-tolerance policy has public relations value, but
that's about it," said Felicia Nestor, the director of food
safety at the Government Accountability Project, a
nonprofit group in Washington that defends whistle-blowers,
including many meat inspectors. "No matter how much fecal
they find, it never seems to trigger shutdowns."
The System
Citations Mount Up, Few Actions Taken
According to interviews with government employees, the
inspectors at Shapiro and their immediate supervisor at the
plant had not been properly trained on the government's new
inspection system.
The employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity,
said that some inspectors became frustrated that their
superiors appeared to ignore problems that they had
carefully detailed in documents called noncompliance
reports, which are commonly referred to as N.R.'s. "There
were repeated N.R.'s," one employee said. "You would think
someone would notice."
Stan Painter, who recently succeeded Mr. Jones as chairman
of the government meat inspectors' union, said there was
little the inspectors could do if their supervisors,
including the agency's district office in Atlanta, did not
take action. "It is not like we are writing these things
and no one is aware of them," Mr. Painter said.
The government's delays at Shapiro were mirrored in recent
cases at other plants that shipped dangerous meat. At the
ConAgra plant in Colorado, the inspector general's audit
noted that inspectors who alerted supervisors to repeated
fecal contamination were discouraged from taking action.
Months before the ConAgra plant shipped contaminated meat
last year, the government's inspector in charge at the
plant sent an e-mail message to a supervisor giving a
"heads up" that the plant had trouble with fecal
contamination, according to copies of messages provided by
the Government Accountability Project, which represents
some of the inspectors in the plant.
After discussions among his aides, Dr. Ronald K. Jones, the
inspection service's district manager, concluded in an
e-mail message two months later that the inspectors should
hold off on making any threat to shut down the plant. Dr.
Jones said the inspectors should continue to detain
contaminated meat in order to prod the company to "submit a
meaningful action plan." According to the inspector
general's report, the company never submitted one.
Inspection service officials declined to comment on the
e-mail exchanges, as did Dr. Jones. Government officials
say they have made many changes in enforcement since the
ConAgra episode. In May, they issued a guideline directing
inspectors to ask a district office to shut a plant down if
they found repeated problems.
But the new instructions still do not specify at what point
the violations become too numerous. William C. Smith,
deputy administrator for field operations at the food
safety service, argued that government officials cannot set
such standards because each plant is different.
"There is no magic number," Mr. Smith said. "To say if you
get 5 of this you do this, or 10 of this you do this - it
would be an arbitrary, capricious system."
The agency is also re-examining the safety systems in all
beef plants to make sure they are designed to prevent E.
coli contamination. Officials point out that they are
finding fewer cases of dangerous bacteria in random tests.
For example, 0.30 percent of meat samples taken this year
through the end of August were found to be tainted with
E.coli O157:H7, down from 0.78 percent in 2002.
In addition, the government has created a group of
inspectors with extra scientific training, to review
plants' safety systems and if necessary help initiate
recalls more quickly. The number of these consumer safety
officers will rise to 300 by year's end, from about 100,
officials said.
Still, the Shapiro case shows that the safety officers can
be slow to act.
In March, a safety officer visited Shapiro's slaughterhouse
to monitor its E. coli controls. The officer took no
action, even though the documents show that inspectors had
already reported fecal and other contamination of meat on
13 days in the first two months of the year.
Another safety officer began to look closely at Shapiro in
July - but only as a result of a separate case. At least 22
people in as many as 15 states had fallen ill from steaks
bought from a Chicago meat company, Stampede Meat. Shapiro
was one of 38 suppliers to that company.
Government officials said they were not able to tie the
tainted steaks to any specific supplier. But after
scrutinizing most of the suppliers, they threatened to shut
down three, including Shapiro. In a July 18 letter, the
government said the Augusta plant had "failed to take
appropriate corrective actions or effective preventive
measures" to stop contamination.
Shapiro executives said that the bacteria found in the
steaks sold by Stampede could not have come from Shapiro.
Mr. Bernard, the Keystone executive, said that last year
Shapiro began testing samples from every 2000-pound box of
meat for E.coli O157:H7 just before shipment. Only 6 out of
5,970 boxes have failed the test this year, he said. The
tainted meat was sold to a company that cooks it to destroy
the bacteria and uses it for chili or dog food, he said.
"Our main focus is to make sure the product that goes out
the door is safe to consume," Mr. Bernard said.
The Actions
Some Improvements, Still Some Risks
While
the government has struggled with enforcement, many
meatpacking plants - including the ConAgra site in
Colorado, now owned by Swift & Company - have added new
safety precautions. Others have lagged. As a result,
experts caution, it is hard for consumers to know whether
the meat they buy comes from the cleanest plants.
Since the E. coli O157:H7 outbreak at its restaurants a
decade ago, Jack in the Box has ordered its suppliers to
test far more extensively for pathogens than the government
requires. Other fast-food chains and some retailers, like
the Costco Wholesale Corporation, have followed suit.
David M. Theno, Jack in the Box's senior vice president for
quality assurance and product safety, estimates that 40
percent of the nation's meat plants now do a "superior job"
on safety, and that 30 percent to 40 percent are "pretty
good."
Referring to the remaining 20 percent to 30 percent, Mr.
Theno said, "There are people at the other end of the thing
that aren't doing well at all."
Caroline Smith-DeWaal, the food safety director at the
Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington,
said consumers should check with their grocery stores and
their children's schools "to ensure that they have strict
standards for testing for harmful pathogens."
Bud Hazelkorn contributed to this report.
nytimes.com
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