On March 11, 1993, Tyson Foods lobbyist, Jack
Williams, visited with the Secretary of Agriculture,
Mike Espy. The very next day, according to
former Agriculture Department officials, Espy's
chief of staff, Ron Blackley, shut down efforts to
tighten poultry inspection standards. Did Tyson
Foods influence decisions to derail tougher
food-safety standards? This question became an
early focus of Don Smaltz's investigation of Mike
Espy, and explains, in part, Smaltz's interest in
pursuing a criminal investigation of Blackley.
Here's what is known about those meetings:
Shortly after arriving at the Deptartment of
Agriculture, in Janaury 1993 the new Secretary,
Mike Espy, faced a crisis. Tainted hamburgers
from Jack-in-the-Box fast-food restaurants in
Washington killed at least two children and sent
many others to the hospital, victims of the
sometimes deadly E. coli bacteria. Immediately,
questions about the adequacy of beef handling
operations became national headline news.
At the Department of Agriculture, officials with
the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
had been for some time preparing proposals that
would tighten existing inspection rules for both
beef and poultry. The new regulations would
become known as a "zero-tolerance" policy - a
policy that increased meat-processing
requirements to ensure the full and proper
removal of fecal contamination.
Responding to the E. coli crisis, the Department
of Agriculture intensified, and ultimately
completed, its efforts to establish "zero-tolerance"
regulations for the red-meat industry. Meanwhile,
the poultry industry continued to negotiate over
application of a "zero-tolerance" policy to chicken
suppliers. Representatives from the poultry
industry sought and received meetings with
Department officials, arguing that the policy was
costly and unnecessarily burdensome. For Tyson
Foods alone, the nation's largest chicken supplier,
the costs of complying with the tougher
regulations would be nearly $40 million a year.
On March 8, 1993, industry representatives
carried their complaints to FSIS officials during a
briefing about the "zero-tolerance" proposal. On
March 11, a second meeting took place, again to
specifically discuss the new poultry proposal.
Later that day, Jack Williams, Tyson Foods
lobbyist, met directly with Sec. Mike Espy. The
specifics of the Williams-Espy meeting remain
unknown.
But the next day, on March 12, Espy's chief of
staff, Ron Blackley met with FSIS officials to
discuss proposed instructions from the
Department to its field operations in response to
the E. coli crisis. According to Wilson Horne,
FSIS Deputy Administrator for Inspection
Operations, near the end of the meeting, Ron
Blackley inquired about the status of the
zero-tolerance proposal for poultry. When
informed that the new poultry regulations were
near completion, Blackley, according to Horne,
ordered the staff to remove the proposal from the
computer files. According to some participants at
the meeting, the message from Blackley was
clear: stop work on the poultry regulations.
For his part, Blackley flatly denies ever pulling the
plug on the poultry regulations. Blackley says that
he was in many meetings and has no recollection
of either this particular meeting or his chief
accuser, FSIS Deputy Administrator, Wilson
Horne.
Nonetheless, progress on the "zero-tolerance"
poultry proposal lay in limbo for more than a year
at the Department. In July, 1994, the new poultry
regulations were finally proposed. But it would
not be until January, 1995 - a month after
Secretary Espy stepped down - that an official
proposal of "zero-tolerance" for poultry was
finally issued.
pbs.org
>>>You liberals are supposed to be in favor of tougher of health,
>>>welfare, and lifestyle regulations to improve the quality of
>>>life. Wot hoppened? Oh, I guess it's okay if it's one of your
>>>boys. |
