Back to Medieval Meat Testing

It’s hard to imagine that parents would knowingly let their children eat meat from a processing plant with a history of bacterial contamination. So why is a federal judge so quick to do exactly that?

First, some background: The Agriculture Department is finally getting serious about food safety problems. Two years ago, it took its first significant step forward from medieval “poke and sniff� meat inspection methods, implementing a chemical test to detect salmonella bacteria, a leading cause of food poisoning, in processing plants. But now a cavalierly dismissive ruling from a U.S. District Court judge in Texas is blocking the agency’s advance. In May, Judge Joe Fish held that federal Agriculture Department inspectors could not shut down a large beef processing plant in Texas simply because it failed four salmonella tests in the previous 13 months. The ruling, made on grounds that salmonella tests are not a fair measure of sanitary conditions, has frustrated food safety experts who consider the salmonella test an accurate and effective regulatory tool.

The Dallas plant currently supplies about 15% of the ground beef for the nationwide federal school lunch program. The judge’s decision will permit the shipments to continue without inspection. Well, then let the same burger meat be on the judge’s plate in the courthouse cafeteria.

In the U.S. Senate earlier this month, lawmakers narrowly defeated a measure by Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, a meatpacking state, that would have responded to the judge’s ban. It would have authorized the Agriculture Department to withdraw or suspend inspection of meat and poultry plants that failed to reduce pathogens in their products, effectively shutting them down because federal laws require regular inspections. So let the same burger meat be served in the Senate dining room, at least to those who voted down the Harkin bill.

In a move to get around Judge Fish’s order, the Agriculture Department will draft new safety standards for the ground beef the government buys for the nation’s schools. The rules would be similar to the stringent testing requirements that the Agriculture Department made fast-food restaurants impose on meat suppliers in 1993 after an outbreak of burger-borne food poisoning among Jack in the Box customers that left four children dead. The agency also plans to launch new tests for strains of two other increasingly common and potentially deadly pathogens, listeria and one particular kind of E. coli.

The proposed new standards and tests are far from a done deal. However, one misguided judge should not be allowed to return the nation’s meat inspection practices to the Middle Ages, especially when the safety of schoolchildren is at stake.