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“BUILDING CONSUMER CONFIDENCE” mentioning the U.S. Dept of Agriculture was published in the Senate section on pages S3045 on May 1, 2000.
The publication is reproduced in full below:
BUILDING CONSUMER CONFIDENCE
Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, in 1968 the Congress of the United States passed the Wholesome Poultry Product Act of 1968.
A former Congressman from Iowa by the name of Neal Smith--Members of the present Congress will remember--was a person who served the people of Iowa very well and spent a considerable amount of time during his years in Congress trying to build consumer confidence in poultry and other meats American consumers buy.
In 1960, there were 1.8 billion chickens produced in the United States and consumed by the public. In 1998, it was up to 8 billion chickens. There has been a very dramatic rise in the consumption of chicken by the American consumer, all the more reason to make sure the Wholesome Poultry Products Act of 1968 is followed.
There is a dismal picture painted about the inspection of poultry slaughterhouses in the United States and some question about whether the meat consumed by the American public is as wholesome as the 1968 act intended. This question arises because of a proposal in the Department of Agriculture to shift some routine Federal inspection from Federal inspectors to inspectors hired by the poultry slaughtering companies. An article was in yesterday's Des Moines Register, by Register Washington reporter George Anthan, who has been reporting on the subject of wholesome inspection of meat by the Department of Agriculture for almost his entire journalistic career. George Anthan is very much an authority on both what was intended and the enforcement of that law.
Rather than summarizing, I will read what was reported yesterday in the Des Moines Register by George Anthan.
The Agriculture Department admits consumers may detest chicken or turkey that contains pus from a pneumonia-like disease called air sacculitis.
But the condition fails to threaten human health, federal officials say, and the issue of dealing with it can be left largely to the employees of meat processing companies, rather than to federal inspectors.
The poultry condition is at the center of a dispute between the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the union that represents federal inspectors over how best to safeguard America's meat.
A former Iowa Congressman, Neal Smith, says, ``I suppose you could sterilize pus and maybe it would not hurt you . . . but the fact is, we should not be eating that kind of stuff.''
Continuing the article:
The Department of Agriculture is implementing a new inspection system that assigns many of the more routine duties now handled by federal inspectors to the companies they regulate. The inspectors, in turn, are supposed to look for systemic problems to prevent disease outbreaks before they happen.
But the union maintains the change breaks a sacred trust with American consumers, who see the Department of Agriculture approval as proof that an independent inspector has signed off on the meat they put on their dining room tables.
The controversy revolves around the Wholesome Poultry Products Act of 1968.
Smith said he ``carefully and deliberately'' included the word ``wholesome'' in the law's title because ``people don't want to eat pus, and scabs, sores and malignant tumors.''
Officials at the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service said that even though inspecting birds for air sacculitis will be the responsibility of the poultry companies, federal inspectors will monitor the process.
Parenthetically, the question for the consumers in America is whether or not they can be satisfied that their food is safe because there is some Federal inspector monitoring it as opposed to Federal inspectors actually inspecting it.
Continuing the article:
They said if the inspectors determine birds with air sacculitis and other defects that don't affect human health are being passed for human consumption, they will notify companies, who are supposed to take corrective actions. ``The only thing an inspector could do under the new system is inform the plant that something is going wrong,'' said Felicia Nestor, a food safety specialist at the Government Accountability Project, a group that supports government whistle-blowers.
``They have no club, especially over the products that already have gone out the door,'' Nestor said. The Department of Agriculture's office of the Inspector General recently interviewed federal inspectors at a Gold Kist, Inc., chicken processing plant at Guntersville, Ala., where the inspection system is being tested.
According to the inspector general's March 3 report, federal inspectors at the plant said that before the system was installed ``the inspectors were removing bad products from the lines.''
After the new system was implemented, government food inspectors ``were told to stop removing products from the lines,'' according to the report.
Spot checks of the Guntersville plant found nine of 60 birds with air sacculitis on Feb. 5 and 20 of 70 birds on Feb. 7. The bad birds had not been removed by company employes ``who had taken the place of (Department of Agriculture) line inspectors,'' the report said.
Air sacculitis can fill a bird's respiratory system, body cavity and hollow avian bones with pus and bacteria.
While the controversy over air sacculitis involves mainly questions about the wholesomeness of pus-filled chickens and turkeys, the disease also was linked to human health problems at a recent meeting of a Department of Agriculture advisory committee on implementing the new inspection system.
Daniel Lafontaine of Columbia, S.C., a veterinarian representing the American Veterinary Medicine Association, said he told agriculture officials at the meeting that
``birds that have air sacculitis may be a wholesomeness issue today and a day or two later these birds may be septicemic.''
After the blood stream has been invaded by virulent microorganisms, a chicken or turkey ``is not safe for human consumption,'' said the South Carolina state meat and poultry inspection system.
Even if cooked properly, he said, ``pus can get pretty gross. You sure don't want to eat it.''
Kenneth Petersen, senior program manager in the Department of Agriculture's food inspection service, said birds with severe air sacculitis are supposed to be condemned by company employees.
If monitoring federal inspectors determine through twice daily checks that they aren't, the firms involved can be cited for failing to meet food safety standards, he said.
Under the new inspection system, as under traditional systems in which federal inspectors examine each carcass, birds with less serious cases of air sacculitis can be
``reworked'' by either cutting away pus-filled air sacs and other tissues or by using a vacuum device to remove the material, Petersen said.
``We recognize that wholesomeness issues are also important and we check for them,'' Petersen said. ``But our emphasis is on those things that may cause an ailment. So, we are seeking an appropriate balance.''
I ask the consumers of America to be aware, as they buy chicken and turkey, of whether or not the wholesomeness act of 1968 is being followed by the Congress of the United States.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Idaho.
Mr. CRAIG. Mr. President, I inquire where we are. Are we in morning business?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are in morning business.
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