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Questioning The USDA ROLE...Guardian AND Promoter?

Mike

Well-known member
Recall raises questions about USDA's two roles, guardian and promoter of U.S. food



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10:19 PM PST on Friday, February 29, 2008

By DOUGLAS QUAN and BEN GOAD
The Press-Enterprise

Special Section: Beef Recall

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has said it doesn't plan to test any beef involved in the record recall because the health risks are remote and the results won't change anything.

Elisa Odabashian, West Coast director of the nonprofit advocacy group Consumers Union, thinks there's another reason: The government doesn't want to create "hysteria" if test samples come back positive for mad cow disease.

The dual roles of the USDA as both a promoter and regulator of the agriculture industry have come under scrutiny since the recall last month of more than 143 million pounds of beef products produced by Chino's Westland/Hallmark Meat Co.

USDA representatives say the agency's marketing arm, the Agricultural Marketing Service, and its food safety arm, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, work independently of each other.

But some consumer and government watchdog groups and lawmakers say there's an inherent conflict of interest.

When there's competing interests within the same department -- between marketing agriculture and cracking down on safety violations -- the American people often lose out, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who is seeking to strip the USDA of its food safety role.

"The other mission of protecting public health -- often times that mission is blurred," she said Friday in an interview. "Trade trumps public health."

For more than a decade, DeLauro has proposed the formation of an independent Food Safety Administration, one would handle all food-related responsibilities currently overseen by the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, the Food and Drug Administration and 13 other agencies.

A lone agency with the single goal of protecting food would help to reduce the estimated 5,000 U.S. deaths caused by food-borne illnesses each year, she said.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., has proposed a similar plan, but legislation has never been passed. DeLauro thinks the recent attention will help the plan move forward.

Laura Reiser, a Food Safety and Inspection Service spokeswoman, said Friday that while there is overlap among some functions of the Agriculture Department, the marketing and food safety arms are separate.

Westland/Hallmark agreed to recall beef products it sold over the past two years after the USDA determined that the products were unfit for human consumption because some cattle did not receive complete or proper inspection.

Undercover video shot by an investigator with the Humane Society of the United States showed Westland/Hallmark workers lifting and pushing cows with a forklift, poking them with electric prods and shooting water into their noses to get them up and walking.

Federal rules say that when a cow goes down after passing a veterinarian's inspection, it must be reinspected by a veterinarian and approved for slaughter before it can proceed to the killing box.

Dual Roles

The Humane Society has not taken a formal position on DeLauro and Durbin's proposal, the group's president, Wayne Pacelle, said Friday.

"We don't oppose it by any means," Pacelle said, adding that there "certainly is tension between their role as a promoter of agriculture and regulator of the industries."

He said the dual responsibilities do not make it impossible for the agency to accomplish both goals -- just more difficult.

The role of the secretary of agriculture, who is appointed by the president, traditionally has been to conduct marketing, said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a nonprofit advocacy group in Washington, D.C.

The current agriculture secretary, Ed Schafer, just assumed the position in January. His predecessor, Mike Johanns, spent more time lobbying foreign governments on behalf of U.S. beef than he did on food safety matters, she said.

"Food safety is low on the priority list unless there's a crisis like this," she said.

In a statement released through a spokesman Friday, Johanns said food safety always came first during his tenure at the USDA.

"There was no conflict between food safety and marketing, because food safety was always the priority. I strongly believe USDA can effectively oversee food safety while also promoting the nation's agriculture products, and they have done so," said Johanns, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat in Nebraska.

Johanns said he promoted U.S. agriculture and beef during his travels abroad. But safety of products entering the United States also was discussed during those trips, he said.

Consumers Union's Odabashian said she fears that some inspectors may look the other way -- such as when a downed cow gets into the food supply -- because they want to see the beef industry succeed.

That's why it's imperative to keep the tasks of promoting and regulating the industry separate, she said.

Odabashian said she would like to see the agency test some of the recalled beef but believes it won't because of the chance a disease might show up.

"They don't want to create a food scare," she said.

Kenneth Petersen, assistant administrator of field operations for the USDA's inspection arm, told reporters last month that testing the recalled beef would be pointless, "given the remote risk, given that I've already made my decision to recall, and given that, frankly, there's no test that's going to tell me anything, and even if there was, it wouldn't change the actions we're taking."

Recall Needed?

Beyond the issue of testing and possible conflicting missions, some lawmakers and witnesses at recent hearings in Washington have questioned whether the recall was needed.

Bill Marler, a trial lawyer who defends victims of food-borne illnesses, testified Tuesday before the House Energy and Commerce Committee's oversight subcommittee. He questioned whether the resources spent to recall meat considered safe should have been spent elsewhere.

During a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee's agriculture subcommittee Thursday, American Meat Institute President J. Patrick Boyle also testified that the recall may have been premature.

At the same hearing, Schafer repeated the USDA's stance that the recall was based on a rule violation, not a health risk.

Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, took exception to the statement.

"If there was no safety problems, why did we destroy 143 million pounds of beef?" Harkin demanded. "The fact is, we don't know that those animals that we saw, that were being scooped up by a forklift, that couldn't stand, we don't know if they are sick or not."

Reach Douglas Quan at 951-368-9479 or [email protected]

Reach Ben Goad at 202- 202-661-8422 or [email protected]
 

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