Federal  Audit Faults Department's Meat and Poultry Inspection System

A draft report from government auditors finds that a new meat and poultry inspection program run by the Department of Agriculture is poorly designed, badly supervised and riddled with problems.

The report, by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, describes a program that is not working to protect the public from bacterial hazard in meat and poultry.  The Agriculture Department's own figures show an increase in levels of salmonella in chicken and the incidence of a form of E-coli from 2000 to 2001.

A copy of the report, which has not yet been made public, was obtained by The New York Times from a person with an interest in improving the department's performance.  It points to several areas of concern in the department's Food and Safety Inspection Service, including poorly designed inspection programs, faulty testing for bacteria, inadequate supervision by untrained inspectors, deficiencies in record keeping and an overall lack of enforcement.  Critics said the lack of enforcement was a result of a change in attitude at the top levels of the department.

Elsa Murano, the under secretary of agriculture responsible for the inspection service, said she would not comment on the report before the agency was able to discuss it with the accounting office.

When the inspection program, the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points, went into effect in 1996, it was intended to remove some of the responsibility for food safety from government inspectors and instead require plans to take responsibility for the safety of their products.

But according to the report, it appears that neither inspectors nor training of inspectors and plant personnel is partly responsible.

The accounting office's findings bolster criticism by consumer groups, particularly about the department's lack of enforcement.  In 68 cases reviewed by the accounting office, the service told 60 plants that it would suspend inspection services and force the plants to close.  In 95 percent of those cases, the service lifted the suspensions.  The removal of the suspensions, the draft report said, "may also remove the incentive for the plants to take prompt corrective and preventive actions."

The problem, said Carol Tucker foreman, director of the Food Policy Institute at the Consumer Federation of America, is that the Agriculture Department wears two hats.  "The tradition at U.S.D.A. is you do everything possible to avoid closing a plant because the U.S.D.A.'s mandate from congress is to promote consumption and production of agricultural projects," Ms. Foreman said.  "But there is a conflict of interest between that and public health, and protection of public health always comes in second."

Under the program, the government tests for the presence of salmonella to determine whether a plant is actually controlling this common disease-causing bacterium.  But if the plant falls its salmonella test, the inspection service does not require it to take immediate steps to rectify the problems.  The report found that, on average, the service waited three months after a plant failed two successive salmonella tests to conduct in-depth studies.  In one case, the report found, it waited almost a year.

The inspection service takes 18 months on average to ensure that plants are meeting the salmonella standard.  After the third consecutive failure of the test the Agriculture Department is supposed to withhold inspection services.

The report says the service allowed a plant to have several suspensions in effect simultaneously.  It cited a plant in Alameda, Calif., where frequent suspensions began in October 2000.  Just as frequently the suspensions were lifted.  Finally, in January, the district office asked the inspection service administrator in Washington to suspend the inspection and was told "there was insufficient cause to take action."

Ms. Foreman, a critic of the program for which she once had responsibility as an assistant agriculture secretary, said the message the department was sending to plants was, "We are not going to hold you accountable."

Ms Murano strongly disagreed with that characterization and said she was unaware of the Alameda problems.

Statistics about food-borne diseases show a general increase in problems.  in 1998, two years after the new program was put into place, 10.8 percent of broiler chickens tested positive for salmonella.  By 2000 the figure was down to 9.1 percent, but in 2001 it was higher than it had been since records were first kept - 11.9 percent.

As of June 26, the Agriculture Department has found 25 meat samples positive for a form of Ecoli.  Last July 3, the number was 17.

The accounting office will need to review its finding with the department before issuing a final report.

By Marian Burros, Wednesday, July 10, 2002 "The New York Times"