Consumer groups say president could reverse food safety gains

WASHINGTON -- For a fourth year in a row, the government is finding fewer germs on ground beef and other types of meat. Consumer advocates say Bush administration policies could reverse that trend.

Last year, 2.8 percent of ground beef tested positive for salmonella bacteria, compared with 3.3 percent in 2000 and 6.4 percent in 1998.

Late last year, however, the Bush administration abandoned a court battle with the meat industry over the government's authority to close plants that repeatedly flunk tests for salmonella. An appeals court ruled in December that meat plants could not be required to meet the Agriculture Department's limits for salmonella.

The administration says it still has all the legal power needed to enforce meat safety standards. Consumer advocates disagree, and if the salmonella rates rises, they will point to the increase as proof they are right.

"Illness rates could go right back up as the Bush administration stops enforcing USDA's limits on salmonella in meat and poultry," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a public advocacy group.

The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention last week reported sharp drops in illnesses caused by six of seven major types of food-borne bacteria from 1996 to 2001, including salmonella, E. coli and camphylobacter.

Elsa Murano, the Agriculture Department's undersecretary for food safety, says the administration is taking steps that should lower even more the rates of meat contamination and human illnesses.

The department has assigned special staff to work with plants on improving sanitation systems, and on Monday planned to announce new requirements for beef-grinding plants.

Putting some teeth in

The facilities will be required to have at least one antimicrobial treatment for beef -- or else buy their beef from a slaughterhouse that does. Most ground-beef plants already meet the requirement, but a few don't, she said.

"This administration ... is going forward and putting some teeth into food safety systems," Murano said.

The department long has credited its bacteria tests for the drop in salmonella levels on meat and poultry, but industry officials say the decline is due to improvements they have made in plant sanitation systems.

The Agriculture Department's salmonella rules set limits on often meat or poultry could test positive for salmonella. The meat industry says the limits, which are based on average contamination rates in the 1990s, are not scientifically based. It is not known how much of the bacteria it takes to make someone sick.

But Carol Tucker Foreman, who oversaw the department's food safety programs during the Carter administration, says the salmonella tests are a good indication of whether packinghouses are putting out clean meat.