- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Consumer
groups on Wednesday criticized a Bush administration plan to stop requiring
that federal purchases of ground beef for the national school lunch program
be tested for illness-causing salmonella.
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- The US Department of Agriculture, which buys more than
100 million pounds (45 million kg) of ground beef annually for federal
lunch programs, last summer ordered suppliers to test raw meat for salmonella,
E. coli 0157:H7 and other food-borne bacteria.
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- The meat industry bitterly opposed the USDA's contract
specification, arguing that it increased the government's cost of ground
beef and was an unfair way to assess a company's overall sanitation standards.
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- The USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, which purchases
beef and other commodities for the school lunch program, issued a notice
last week saying it planned to stop requiring the food safety tests.
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- Of the 120 million pounds (54 million kg) of ground beef
purchased and tested last year, 7% was rejected for various types of contamination,
according to USDA data.
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- More than half of that amount--or 4.8 million pounds
(2.2 million kg)--contained salmonella, said the USDA tests.
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- Salmonella can cause vomiting, diarrhea and fever in
healthy adults, and can be deadly for the elderly or people with weak immune
systems. An estimated 600 Americans die from salmonella annually out of
1.4 million who become ill from the bacterium, according to federal health
data.SAFETY TESTS NEEDED?
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- Consumer groups said they would fight the USDA action.
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- ``Last year, the USDA rejected almost 5 million pounds
(2.3 million kg) for salmonella contamination in meat intended for schoolchildren,
so now they're not going to look for it any more. That just doesn't make
sense,'' said Carol Tucker Foreman, food safety specialist with the Consumer
Federation of America.
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- Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the
Public Interest, said the salmonella testing was an important tool to keep
food safe for the millions of US schoolchildren who buy subsidized lunches.
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- One of the biggest sellers of ground beef to the USDA
was Supreme Beef Processors, a Texas company that failed four sets of salmonella
tests before declaring bankruptcy last September. In the 1999-2000 school
year, Supreme Beef sold $23.3 million worth of beef to the government.
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- Supreme Beef won a federal court ruling that the USDA
could not test for salmonella to measure whether a beef plant was clean
and sanitary. The case has been appealed.USDA REQUIRES OTHER SAFETY MEASURES
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- Ken Clayton, acting administrator for the Agricultural
Marketing Service, said the agency planned to make other changes to improve
food safety.
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- Meat processors that want to sell ground beef, pork or
ground turkey to the federal government will have to adopt quality-control
programs that meet ``statistical process control limits,'' according to
USDA documents.
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- ``Our objective in buying ground meat for school lunch,
particularly, and other feeding programs is to ensure that we are buying
the safest possible food,'' Clayton told reporters.
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- ``We have been reminded periodically this year that simply
testing the end-product in fact is not the best way to get the safest possible
food,'' he added.
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- Clayton said the USDA would continue to test its ground
beef purchases for the presence of E. coli 0157:H7, a relatively rare but
particularly lethal bacterium.
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- The USDA's planned contract specifications will also
allow beef processors to irradiate ground beef to destroy any disease-causing
bacteria. That treatment, approved by federal regulators two years ago,
has been criticized by some consumer groups that say irradiation will tempt
companies simply to sterilize feces and other sources of contamination
rather than working to prevent them in the first place.
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- Clayton said the USDA would finalize its contract terms
before it began purchasing ground beef in July for the school lunch program.
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- The USDA's planned changes have caught the eye of Sen.
Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat active in food safety issues. Durbin
was scheduled to hold a news conference on Thursday.
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