Rat patrol - Food warehouses under attack by USDA, rodents

CHICAGO -- On the city's South Side is a six-story brick warehouse. Behind its walls are 14 million pounds of meat and poultry, and several million pounds of butter, fish, nuts and other food.

And it is home to some well-fed rats.

It's the rats -- determined creatures that apparently swam into LaGrou Cold Storage from the sewer -- that led authorities to put a legal padlock on the door last week and raised the real possibility that all that food would be destroyed.

The food is now in limbo. The U.S. Department of Agriculture is waiting to see if dozens of companies with meat stored there can come up with a proposal to prove to the agency that at least some of the meat remains safe to eat. Meanwhile, federal officials have asked a judge to condemn the rest of the food.

'Detained' meat

Such a massive lockup is unusual. USDA spokesman Steven Cohen said nobody in his office can recall more meat being "detained." At the same time, though, it is just another chapter in the ongoing war to protect meat and other food.

Last year, a Chicago wholesale food distributor and its chief executive pleaded guilty to federal charges stemming from the discovery of more than 61,000 pounds of rat-infested poultry products.

The charges came after an inspection of Hop Kee Inc. revealed, among other things, more than 50 live rats and several dead ones. There was evidence that some had enjoyed some meat in the freezer.

The presence of rats almost always signals other problems, and that was the case at Hop Kee. Along with the rats, inspectors found dead birds and "live and dead cockroaches in the bean wash room and bean incubator room, including inside pails of soaking beans..." according to a press release issued by Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the northern district of Illinois.

In 2000, a USDA compliance officer described conditions at Helmos Food Products in Chicago as the worst he'd ever seen. The officer told of live mice and rodent droppings covering a pallet of meat. Officials ended up destroying about 100,000 pounds of food. The owner was convicted of federal charges related to storing and distributing rodent-infested products.

The owner appealed, arguing that the meat was so rotten that no one could possibly believed that he intended to sell it. His appeal was rejected.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, a longtime critic of the uneven way food is inspected in this country, said one reason for the kind of situation uncovered at LaRou is that there are too many agencies involved.

"The system is so bureaucratic it is a miracle our food supply is safe," said Durbin. "We do daily inspections of meat processors, but that's not the case with other food products." And, as the LaGrou incident illustrates, it is not the case with the storage of unprocessed meat, he said.

Nowhere is the battle to protect food waged more openly and with more enthusiasm than in Chicago. In the city that once was Hog Butcher to the World, that means taking control of the vast network of alleys, where people leave their garbage.

This is important because if the city can keep the alleys clean, there will be nothing to attract vermin. And if the vermin aren't hanging around the alleys behind restaurants and warehouses, the theory goes, they won't be trying to get inside, where the real food is.

Killing spree

A major focus of the city's efforts is on its rats. Since the 1970s, when an estimated 6 million rats called Chicago home, the city has gone on a rat killing spree. Today, there are only about a half-million rats in Chicago, said Al Sanchez, who heads the city's streets and sanitation department.

A big reason is the city's aggressive efforts to cut off the rats' food supply. "If you get rid of their food, they'll die," said Sanchez.

To that end, the city has moved to get rid of oil drums that once were widely used as garbage cans in favor of dumpsters with lids.

The city has a team of rat assassins who hunt and kill rats. That means trapping, poisoning and even smoking them out of their homes and clubbing them to death with shovels if they show themselves.