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COMMENTARY: ConAgra recall exposes worst in consumer group ignorance of industry

There is no joy in Colorado this week.

What began as a large but these days rather routine recall of 354,000 pounds of ground beef from ConAgra's Greeley, Colo., plant suspected of being contaminated with E. coli O157:H7 escalated like to more than 18 million pounds.

Let's be honest about the nature of this recall. First of all, much of the nearly 19 millions pounds of product has already been sold and/or consumed, nearly all of it without incident. Although 30 people sickened from product believed to have originated at the Greeley plant, assuming each one ate and entire quarter-pound hamburger, that means less than eight pounds out of 18.64 million pounds caused problems.

Is it tragic that kids get sick? Absolutely. It's also tragic that kids get abducted from their homes and killed by homicidal pedophiles, but believe it or not, that happens at four times the rate that people were getting sick from ConAgra's E. coli-contaminated beef.

Second, and I hate to suggest negligence here, but somehow, those who prepared the hamburgers that made people ill violated one of more of the rules of safe food handling. The meat wasn't cooked properly, or utensils were cross contaminated or some other problem allowed the kids and other who got sick to be exposed to raw meat.

Now, that's not to say the blame belongs with the consumer. It doesn't. But rather than focus on the scope and scale of this recall, as the anti-industry activists seem to be, I feel it's more valuable to focus on the matter of solutions. While the overall occurrence of food-borne illness is remarkably low in this country, and while raw meat and poultry account for only a fraction of all food-related outbreaks, E. coli O157:H7 in beef is a serious, serious problem. Any time people -- children, the elderly, those weakened by disease -- fall prey to the ravages of any microbial pathogen, it's awful. Nobody, least of all food company executives, wants to see customers getting sick as a result of contaminated food.

But that seems lost on those who find nothing but fault with packers and processors. For example, the strident stance adopted by the advocacy group Safe Tables Our Priority (S.T.O.P.) -- whose founder Nancy Donley, I should hasten to add, is a well-meaning mother who lost her son to complications resulting from food-borne E. coli O157:H7 -- is a classic example of well-intentioned ideas that unfortunately, would make a minimal difference on the ultimate measure of food-safety success: How many people get sick.

S.T.O.P. is gaining some unwarranted media play with its list of the following recommendations

With the exception of the final recommendations, this list is a waste.

The answers to the challenges of food safety are not going to be gained in some lab testing ground beef. They're not going to be discovered in the labyrinthine depths of USDA headquarters in Washington, D.C. And they're certainly not going to be cobbled together from a raft of restrictive regulations that S.T.O.P. and others start demanding within hours of the announcement of a recall.

What are the problems with their "prescription?" Let's review:

Microbial testing. Testing does not kill pathogens. It cannot reduce the incidence of contamination. Testing only verifies and validates other anti-microbial interventions.

The reality is that testing 2,000-pound combos of beef trimmings to see if a sample comes back positive for E. coli O157:H7 is virtually worthless. If it does, it doesn't mean the entire day's production is contaminated, as USDA officials argued once the ConAgra recall began to expand. Worse, if the sample comes back negative, it doesn't mean that all 2,000 pounds are just dandy. Microbial testing is truly searching for the proverbial microbe in a haystack.

Intensified inspection. no matter how much inspection pressure is piled onto meat processors, it will neither stop nor decrease the percentage of pathogen-carrying livestock that arrive at the nation's packing plants. Only such live animal interventions as vaccinations and probiotics can reduce that risk factor.

Mandatory recall powers. As logical as this might first seem, mandatory recalls will not improve either the efficiency or effectiveness of product recalls. Such a strategy would only divert USDA's already limited resources to create another "agency within and agency," instead of focusing on inspection reforms that would re-orient the department toward a scientific, risk-based system of food-safety oversight.

The activists, lobbyists and media members who constantly parrot the knee-jerk response of "more government intervention" need to think about what they're suggesting. Would anybody feel good about handing the Internal Revenue Service "mandatory auditing authority?" Or giving the Immigration and Naturalization Service "mandatory deportation authority?"

The ultimate irony is that the same coalition of soft-headed, left-leaning crusaders who are the most belligerent about demanding that Congress hand USDA mandatory recall authority are the same voices agonizing the loudest about the "abuses" of Big Government in areas where they don't want Uncle Sam involved.

If we're talking about pursuing the war on terrorism, maintaining homeland security or-- God forbid -- considering how to neutralize Saddam Hussein's pursuit of nuclear capability, then Bush's Cabinet officers, White House staff and military commanders are painted as outright fascists trampling on the civil liberties of both citizens and enemies alike.

But if the issue is whether to hand USDA a legal mandate to march into a meat plant and start tearing apart the firm's business records, well, that's a vital and necessary function of modern government, my friends, and we should all be lining up to salute the wisdom of these activists who alone understand that by definition, corporations are evil, and thus require regulatory restrictions to prevent their wreaking carnage on the poor consumers held hostage by their greed.

I say to those who advocate this terrible trifecta of more testing, more inspection and mandatory recalls, you're pursuing -- at best -- an off-target agenda that would not advance real solutions to food-safety scenario we find ourselves in at the beginning of this new century.

You're program is not a solution, it's a template for endless fighting, feuding and failure that will leave consumers at risk, the industry at odds with key stakeholders and government cast in the no-win role of food-safety cop charged with catching every criminal every time -- the culprits in this case being billions of microscopic bacteria.

The real goal here is protecting people from potentially lethal pathogens. If this latest recall doesn't spur more companies to consider seriously the installation of irradiation technology -- or the provision of such services by any of a number of third-party facilities -- then the industry deserve the bad pub that will surely come its way in a New York second after the next recall hits the media.

Irradiation, proper handling, proper cooking and measures to control cross contamination both in foodservice and in the household are the best (and only) effective measures to deal with microbial pathogens in ground beef.

If I had young kids or if I were responsible for an elderly parent, I would NEVER fool around with hamburger that I didn't purchase, store and cook properly myself. And you'd better believe it would be irradiated.

Look, the bottom line is simple: Interventions that can prevent pathogens from contaminating products before they are distributed to retailers and restaurateurs -- that's the only sure road to improving the safety of the food supply.

Inspectors can't do it. Lab technicians can't do it. Even well-intentioned executives have only one choice if they truly want to avoid repeating the scenario that not only ConAgra but the whole industry has suffered through these past several weeks: Invest in anti-microbial technology.

There is no other way.