WASHINGTON -- President Clinton on Saturday announced the most sweeping changes in the government's meat inspection system since it was created nearly a century ago, outlining new rules that would, for the first time, impose scientific tests for disease-causing bacteria.
The new rules call for more inspection and controls by the meat- and poultry-processing industry itself and new testing by the Department of Agriculture. Drafted over the last two years, the rules will be final upon their publication in the Federal Register next week. They are to take effect in stages, some immediately and some over the next two to three years, officials said.
"These new meat and poultry contamination safeguards will be the strongest ever," Clinton said in his weekly radio address.
"Parents should know that when they serve a chicken dinner, they are not putting their children at risk," Clinton said.
Since the federal Meat Inspection Act was passed in 1907 -- after the publication of Upton Sinclair's muckraking expose of the industy, "The Jungle" -- inspectors have relied on the "sniff and poke method" to certify that carcasses are safe to eat as they pass along a conveyor belt. But inspectors cannot always detect contaminated meat just by quickly smelling or looking for the obvious signs of decay.
The government had wanted processors to perform microbial tests for the presence of the deadly salmonella bacteria, which kills more than 4,000 people a year and sickens as many as 5 million, and for E. coli bacteria, which indicates fecal contamination and can be deadly in some forms. But in a compromise, processors will test for E. coli. and federal inspectors will conduct tests for salmonella at various stages in the process.
Consumer groups have been pressing for change since a virulent strain of E. coli bacteria traced to undercooked hamburgers at Jack in the Box restaurants killed several children in the Pacific Northwest in 1993 and sickened hundreds of others. Saturday, such groups joined industry representatives in praising the new rules.
"This rule is a landmark in improving meat and poultry safety," said Caroline Smith De Waal, director of food safety for the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer group. "While it may need some fine-tuning, nonetheless it provides the blueprint. They're giving more responsibility to the industry, while at the same time providing adequate government oversight."
Gary M. Weber, director of animal health and meat inspection for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, an industry group, said: "We're very pleased that after a 10-year struggle to redesign the meat inspection system, we're at the first stages of implementing a modern, scientific-based prevention system."
Inaugurating these new rules in an election year, the president gave credit to consumer groups, especially the parents of the young victims of the Pacific Northwest outbreak, who pressed for these changes.
"The parents of many of the E. coli victims turned their grief into a determination to help others," Clinton said. "In the face of this unspeakable tragedy, they had one insistent question: How could this have happened?"
Under the new rules, packers and slaughterhouses will be required to establish a system known as hazard analysis and critical control points, identifying each point and potential problem in the process -- such as cutting, grinding and overheating -- where contamination can occur and developing steps to prevent it. The bacterial tests are intended to assure that the new safety steps work, officials said.
Companies will have as long as 42 months to set up hazard control systems, with smaller companies having the longest time to comply. Eventually, plants will be required to reduce their salmonella contamination to below the prevailing national average for the type of meat they process. For example, 20 percent of broiler chickens are contaminated with salmonella.
Within six months, companies will also have to set up new sanitation systems to insure cleanliness.
Just months ago, when it became clear that the government would not require processors themselves to test for salmonella, consumer groups were sharply critical. But they participated in negotiations over the final rules and now seem content to claim victory.
Ms. Smith De Waal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said that even though the industry will not be required to conduct its own salmonella testing, companies will undoubtedly have to test for the bacteria as part of their efforts to prove their safety systems are effective.
"We didn't get everything we wanted," she said. "We wanted mandatory salmonella testing by industry. But we did get it wrapped into the initial validation work the industry will have to do."
The Republicans responded to Clinton's announcement by raising questions about his behavior toward the meat industry when he was governor of Arkansas, saying his actions then "left more than half the streams in his home state too polluted for drinking, swimming or fishing."
"As usual, Bill Clinton's past raises questions about his credibility, even on an issue as nonpartisan as food safety," said a news release from the Bob Dole for President committee. "After waiting three years to take action, Bill Clinton today didn't explain how his new election year 'get-tough with the meat industry' attitude squares with his old 'easy-come, easy-go' treatment of the same industry in Arkansas."
Some congressional Republicans tried to block the new rules, and threatened to withhold appropriations for new inspectors and training, arguing that they might be too onerous for the industry. But administration officials said the new rules were intended to grant the industry new flexibility in exchange for its assuring the safety of its own processes.
"For years, we have had the government doing the work, the inspectors in the plants, and you hear stories of cursory checks and that's it," said Sally Katzen, administrator of the office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget.
"This is an attempt to get away from government micromanaging the process and instead saying to the regulated entity, 'You figure out how to do it, you're responsible, and we'll do some testing to make sure there are performance standards.'"
The regulations build on similar standards for seafood
inspection issued nine months ago, Ms. Katzen said.
WASHINGTON -- The new inspection system announced Friday by the Clinton administration provides for the government and the industry to share responsibility for monitoring and testing meat and poultry all along the processing chain from slaughter to the grocery shelf.
There are four major components of the program, which Agriculture Department officials say is a profound change from the current system that is based largely on sensory testing -- the "poke and sniff" test -- that varies from plant to plant.
"Meat and poultry inspections now are subjective tests based on seeing, feeling, touching," Dan Glickman, the secretary of agriculture, said in an interview Friday. "What these rules do is basically say we are moving to a science-based system."
Glickman described the current system as "catch as catch can." Some companies, especially the larger ones, have already put in place many of the changes that will become mandatory under the new rules. But, he said, there is no modern, systematic monitoring of the industry.
The main elements of the program are:
-- The federal government will set standards for contamination by salmonella bacteria, and the Agriculture Department, for the first time, will be responsible for conducting tests for that disease-causing contaminant. Beginning this summer, no plant will be allowed to exceed the current average contamination. Twenty percent of chicken products currently show a trace of salmonella contamination; for turkey products the level is 49 percent. Plants not meeting that standard face penalties and ultimately could be closed. The Department plans to tighten those standards in 16 months.
-- The processors will be required to test all their products for the bacteria E. Coli, which is considered a reliable indicator of fecal contamination. The department will not require the total elimination of all such bacteria but will require plants to keep contamination below a minimum level.
-- Each plant that processes meat and poultry will be required to identify a series of critical points along the chain during which the product could become contaminated, similar to what the Agriculture Department required of fish processors last year. The plants would have to check for contamination at each of the checkpoints from when the product is received from the farm to when it goes out to the grocery.
The Department of Agriculture will have to approve each plant's program of checkpoints. Michael R. Taylor, the acting undersecretary of agriculture for food safety said Friday that only a minority of the nation's processing plants currently have such programs.
-- All processing plants would have to adopt a written plan within three months to keep them free from contamination. This would include items such as what the plant does to ensure that surface bacteria from an animal's skin is not carried into the meat when it is slaughtered.
Taylor estimated the cost to the industry at $80 million annually and said it would cost consumers a tenth of a cent per pound on meat products. The government is planning to carry out the program using current funds.
Carol Tucker Foreman, a former agriculture secretary and now the head of the Safe Food Coalition, said the program was a major change in how the government views meat contamination. She said the program will not only save the lives of thousands of people each year but will also save billions of dollars in annual health costs.
After the initial outbreak, which caused the death of a 2-year-old boy, the total number of confirmed and probable cases has risen to 400, Dr. John M. Kobayashi, the Washington State epidemiologist, said in an interview yesterday.
The tainted hamburger was voluntarily removed from sale on Jan. 18, and there have been no new primary cases since then. To minimize a second wave of the outbreak -- transmission from those who ate the tainted hamburger to others in their homes, day care-centers and workplace -- health officials warned people to wash their hands frequently. Whether or not for that reason, the number of secondary cases is coming in less than feared, with only 35 in Washington State. A few cases have also been reported in Nevada and Idaho.
"It's pretty encouraging," Dr. Kobayashi said, adding that his team continued to be cautious.
Nevertheless, one measure of the seriousness of the Washington outbreak was that 125 people had to be admitted to a hospital, Dr. Kobayashi said.
The tainted meat has led to kidney failure in at least 29 people and forced 21 to undergo kidney dialysis, said Dr. Ellis D. Avner, a kidney expert at Children's Hospital in Seattle. Seven children with kidney damage caused by the ailment were still in the hospital and three of the four undergoing dialysis were in critical condition yesterday.
A 2-year-old girl also died in the outbreak in Washington, but health officials have not been able to link her case to Jack in the Box hamburgers or to any other case. They are still investigating.
Public health officials have many reasons to be concerned about E. coli 0157:H7, the bacterium that causes the illness involved in the outbreak. It can crop up anywhere from municipal water and apple cider to rare hamburgers, one of Americans' favorite foods. Doctors have not yet decided on the most effective treatment and in most cases at present can do little more than let the disease take its course. Antibiotics do not seem to help and may even make the disease worse. The symptoms can range from mild to extremely violent, leading occasionally to death, especially among children and the elderly.
E. coli 0157:H7 is a variant of one of the most common bacteria that live harmlessly by the billions in the human gut.
The bacterium can cause diarrhea that is often bloody, severe bleeding, anemia and kidney failure that requires dialysis. The bacterium can also produce a wide variety of baffling symptoms, even fooling doctors into performing unnecessary surgery.
The bacterial illness was unknown until 11 years ago, when it was linked to tainted hamburger and added to the small list of potentially fatal food-borne ailments.
Now the ailment is an important and growing public health problem. But Federal health officials say that the true scope of the problem cannot be measured because laboratories do not routinely test for the particular bacterium because of time and cost.
Many experts have urged that more laboratories use the special culture medium that is needed to identify E. coli 0157:H7 because identifying the organism can affect therapy, eliminate the need for expensive unneeded diagnostic procedures like barium enemas and colonoscopies, and can lead to recognition of outbreaks.
Epidemiologists have found that many cases go undetected unless there is a cluster of kidney failure cases, or because large numbers of people are hospitalized simultaneously with severe diarrheal illness.
Washington is one of the few states where E. coli 0157:H7 is a reportable illness. More active surveillance is needed in other states to detect cases and prevent further outbreaks, said Dr. Patricia M. Griffin, an expert in the ailment at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
She and other experts have urged studies to determine the risks and benefits of antibiotic therapy for the ailment.
Outbreaks can be particularly difficult to avoid because cattle are a key reservoir of the bacterium. Dr. Griffin and other experts said there was a critical need for studies of the mechanism by which meat becomes contaminated with E. coli during slaughter and processing and of ways to reduce such contamination. They suspect that most meat is contaminated at the time of slaughter and that undercooked hamburger is the chief means of spread. Undercooking is believed to be a greater problem than contamination by an infected food handler.
E. coli 0157:H7 differs from other members of the E. coli family in that it clings to the wall of the cell in the bowel and produces a toxin that can cause bleeding. Precisely how the toxin damages tissues throughout the body is not known, and it might be this factor that makes antibiotics ineffective.
Doctors and individuals can recognize the infection by its spectrum of symptoms, which in addition to bloody diarrhea can include abdominal cramps and vomiting, but often without fever. The illness usually resolves itself in about a week. But complications can develop at any time, most commonly in the very young and in the elderly.
The most feared complication is hemolytic-uremic syndrome, which is the leading cause of acute kidney failure in children. Many children may need to undergo dialysis. Although most soon recover, about 15 percent go on to need permanent dialysis or a kidney transplant.
"It always hits healthy kids," said Dr. Howard Trachtman, a specialist in kidney diseases of children at Schneider Children's Hospital in New Hyde Park, L.I. He is working with Robert Galler, who has established a foundation to increase awareness and support research for a cure for the ailment that killed his daughter, Lois Joy Galler, last July.
The ailment can easily be misdiagnosed. Severe abdominal pain and intestinal bleeding from E. coli 0157:H7 infection has led surgeons to operate unnecessarily and remove sections of the bowel and to mistakenly diagnose inflammatory bowel disease.
E. coli's newly recognized role in human disease resulted partly from happenstance in 1982 through an investigation of two outbreaks of a distinctive bloody diarrheal illness among those who ate tainted hamburgers, including customers at a McDonald's in Oregon and Michigan.
Laboratory workers, suspecting another microbe, were surprised to detect E. coli 0157:H7 in cultures from a few cases. Because the particular type had never been linked to human infection, though E. coli has been known for about a century, proof of its causal role required further investigation. Even then, E. coli 0157:H7 was thought to be a medical oddity.
Then came a link to the hemolytic-uremic syndrome, which had been a puzzle since it was first reported in 1955 in Switzerland. Because such cases occurred in clusters, scientists had theorized that it was caused by a microbe. But the many microbial candidates fell by the wayside as researchers ran into many dead ends before E. coli was suspected.
Now, epidemiologists are finding that the ailment can strike anyone at any age, with the highest rates in children under 5, especially for the kidney complications. Adults may develop a bleeding disorder known as thrombocytopenic purpura, or TTP.
The ailment has been reported throughout the world. Canada has noted a problem with it, and for unknown reasons most of the cases in the United States have been in states like Washington and Minnesota that border on Canada and that have active surveillance programs.
Limited surveillance has shown that outbreaks in restaurants can occur at any time but that sporadic cases occur most frequently in the summer.
Hamburger seems to pose the greatest risk because such meat is ground and mixed, providing a large surface area for growth of the bacteria. Little risk of illness from these bacteria exists if hamburger has been thoroughly cooked, as pork usually is. But if hamburger is undercooked, bacteria inside a hamburger patty may escape destruction. If the bacteria are on the surface of steak and rib meat, they are generally killed when the outside is cooked even though the inside may be rare, health officials said.
As a result of the investigation of the Washington outbreak, the Food and Drug Administration has recommended that the Federal minimum cooking temperature for ground beef be raised to 155 degrees from 140.
Mike Espy, the Secretary of Agriculture, has also pledged to tighten Federal meat inspection standards.
But some critics contend that only irradiation of meat will eliminate the hazard of infection from E. coli 0157:H7 and other dangerous microbes because no meat is sterile and most contains millions of bacteria.
At Children's Hospital here, a 9-year-old girl is hanging on to life by a thread after eating tainted hamburger. A 2-year-old boy has already died, and 16 other children are being treated for severe illness brought on by the same contaminated meat.
Federal officials say the cries of these children are raising alarms across the nation about how meat, particularly hamburger, is processed, inspected and cooked. In the last two weeks, more than 200 people in the Pacific Northwest and a handful of people in other Western states have been stricken with E. coli 0157:H7, a bacterium that has killed 16 people nationwide since it was first identified 10 years ago.
The hamburgers in the most recent outbreak came from the Jack in the Box food chain, which has 1,170 restaurants, all west of the Mississippi. In an interview today, Robert Nugent, president of company, said the chain cooked its meat below a standard set by Washington State. More Illness Expected
"This is a catastrophe," Mr. Nugent said. "It has become clear that we were not cooking our meat in compliance with Washington State standards." The company has 60 restaurants in the state.
He added: "This has opened up a lot of people's eyes. We know all meat has bacteria, but how much of that bacteria will kill somebody?"
He said the company was in violation of the safe-cooking regulations because it was unaware that last May Washington had set a higher temperature requirement of 155 degrees inside the meat, a level that normally produces a medium hamburger. That required temperature is the highest in the nation.
This state's chief epidemiologist, Dr. John Kobayashi, said he expected the toll of serious illnesses to continue to climb for the next few days. Although the tainted meat was recalled last Monday, the illness has an incubation period of up to nine days, he said.
"This has been a nightmare for the parents," said Dean Forbes, a spokesman for Children's Hospital, whose doctors first alerted health authorities about the outbreak. "To think that something as benign as hamburger could kill a kid is just startling to most people."
In the wake of the food poisoning outbreak, Federal officials say they are considering raising the minimum guidelines for cooking processed beef to something above the current level of 140 degrees. That is the standard most states follow and close to the level at which Jack in the Box was cooking the meat that has been traced to 200 cases of severe food poisoning. Batch Was Contaminated
But it is not just the cooking of meat that has come under criticism. After laboratory analysis by state and Federal health scientists, Jack in the Box last Monday recalled about 28,000 pounds of frozen hamburger patties from a batch of meat found to have been heavily contaminated with the strain of bacteria that health officials say caused the outbreak. Another 40,000 patties were consumed, officials said, in Washington, Nevada and parts of Southern California.
The fact that so much contaminated meat could be shipped to retail outlets without being detected has called attention to the meat safety process itself. Federal officials say that 7,400 inspectors examine the carcasses of 120 million animals a year and that very little contaminated meat gets through. But the inspections are limited to visual examinations, for discolored meat, rather than laboratory analysis of certain samples.
"It's unbelievable that such a low level of inspection exists in a society so advanced," said Joseph Dolan, whose two young daughters suffered kidney failure after eating contaminated cheeseburgers from Jack in the Box. "No matter where you buy ground beef, you're susceptible to getting sick."
Federal officials say about 6,000 cases of illness caused by E. coli 0157:H7 are reported each year. The strain, first discovered in 1982, is a particularly virulent form of a bacteria found in the intestines of warm-blooded animals. In about 10 percent to 15 percent of the reported cases, it will cause hemolytic uremic syndrome, an illness that can lead to a failure of the kidneys and heart, and to death. Children and the elderly are particularly vulnerable.
Washington raised its meat-cooking standards last May in response to a previous outbreak of E. coli here, in 1986, when two people were killed.
Roughly four million cases of some type of food poisoning are reported annually, but the strain of bacteria that caused this outbreak is one of the few kinds that can kill people. "In terms of severity, this is one of the worst," said Dr. Douglas Archer, director of the Federal Government's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
Dr. Archer, like other food inspection officials interviewed, emphasized that the nation's food supply might be the safest in the world. "How many billions of hamburgers are consumed annually with no resulting illness?" he said. "People should put this case in context."
But many food experts, in and out of Government, say this outbreak in the Northwest has pointed to a need to upgrade the inspection system and cooking process. Despite the elaborate system of inspections, the safety of meat depends, ultimately, on whether it is cooked adequately enough, officials say.
"Raw meat is flesh -- tissue -- and all tissue contains bacteria," said Jim Greene, a spokesman for the Food and Safety Inspection Program of the United States Agriculture Department. "You're never going to get sterile meat." Sampling Begun
The Government is starting to examine samples from selected meat processing plants to see whether E. coli and other dangerous bacteria are widespread. If they find a high level of contamination, they may change the inspection process to include more laboratory sampling, officials said.
The tainted meat from Jack in the Box was processed by Vons Companies of Arcadia, Calif., from cattle slaughtered in California, Colorado and Michigan. Julie Reynolds, a spokeswoman for the meat processor, said the company was in compliance with all Federal regulations and, like other plants, has Federal inspectors who work on the premises.
"We are confident the contaminated meat did not occur as a result of processing from Vons," Ms. Reynolds said.
Other officials have speculated the meat was contaminated at the time it was slaughtered, but Government investigators have yet to confirm where it was tainted.
Even though the meat was badly contaminated, the bacteria could have been eliminated had the meat been thoroughly cooked to reach the temperature of 155 degrees or above, Federal officials said.
But Mr. Nugent, the company president, said he questioned whether cooking the meat at the Washington threshold would have killed the bacteria.
"I think there is a responsibility at both ends of the food chain," he said. "How do you explain the fact that for more than 30 years we've been selling hamburgers without a problem then all of a sudden -- Bam! -- this happens." Higher Cooking Temperature
The company has since raised the minimum temperature for cooking hamburgers in all its outlets to 155 degrees, Mr. Nugent said, and has apologized in full-page newspaper advertisements in the Seattle area.
Jack in the Box's parent company, Foodmakers Inc., lost 30 percent of its value in the stock market last week. It has since regained much of the loss. The company had $1.29 billion in earnings last year; nearly two-thirds of the revenue came from Jack in the Box outlets, Mr. Nugent said.
The McDonald's Corporation, the leader in fast-food hamburger sales nationwide, has long cooked it burgers to a temperature of at least 157 degrees, said Rebecca A. Lewis, a customer relations representative at the company's headquarters in Oakbrook, Ill.
Federal officials said most food poisoning from meat comes from home cooking, particularly on outdoor grills. The Government recommends that people cook hamburger to a temperature of 160 degrees.
The death and illnesses in Washington has caused some parents here to question the safety of fast food. But other parents say they believe that the incident is a freak occurrence.
"I don't want to steal my children's joy at going to McDonald's," said Mr. Dolan, who lives in the Seattle suburb of Kent. "It's part of growing up. My daughters really enjoy eating there. And I don't want them punished for this episode."
Listserve report provided 6.24.96 by:
Dave Harlan, PAS
Taylor By-ProductsThe FDA's comment period regarding BSE regulations ended June 13, 1996. Below is a quick review of comments submitted by the major producer and feed groups involved.
National Renderer's Association (NRA) recognizes the complexity of the issue and offered a mandated HACCP approach as an alternative to a ruminant to ruminant ban (R-R ban). One attachment is a 27 page booklet on HACCP guidelines for the rendering industry. NRA offers assistance to the FDA in the area of HACCP compliance; suggests an industry based program which can be verified by the FDA through spot inspections.
Another section of NRA's comments deals with the economic impact of a R-R ban. Three scenario's are given, the first being loss of the ruminant feed market only [ie, pigs and chickens are not ruminants] at $289 million/year. The 2nd scenario is the cessation of the rendering of ruminant raw materials which would cost the cattle (beef & dairy) industry at least $1.6 billion each year in addition to environmental costs. Segragation of ruminant materials from non-ruminant materials in the rendering stream is scenario 3. This last scenario would require a $760 million capital investment and $156 million in additional operating expenses/year.
National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF), like the NCBA, asks that HACCP be implemented to reduce any risk. They support the interim voluntary R-R ban until either the FDA regulates or the rendering industry addresses two issues; 1) Removal of all CNS suspect animals from rendering stream (done), 2) "Specified Offal" (brain, eyes, spinal cord) from 4-D animals (dead, dying, diseased, disabled) be removed from materials destined for ruminant feed. NMPF asks for immediate implementation and enforcement of this restriction.
American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) is against R-R ban and suggests GMP's or HACCP as an alternative. Alternative regulation should set acceptable sources of raw materials and minimum time and temp processing conditions. AFIA, like NRA, asks for immediate ban on rendering of sheep over 1 year age and a mandated scrapie eradication program. AFIA also suggests increased monitoring of all TSE diseases and tighten control over the importation of all ruminant animals and products.
National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA) supports a risk based multi-layered HACCP approach instead of a regulated R-R ban. Potential control points suggested are 1) Exclusion of infectious material from rendering, 2) Inactivation of the agent through time and temp controls, and 3) Prohibit feeding products to susceptible classes of livestock. NCBA states that in the past the voluntary ban on rendering sheep material was very successful. They support their voluntary R-R ban in the interim until the FDA can provide HACCP regulation.
American Sheep Industry Association (ASI) wants HACCP and GMP approach and recommends that the FDA consult the research community on the details. Suggests that alternative uses for "high risk" materials such as sheep can be utilized.
From what I understand the veterinary groups (AABP) did not submit detailed comments (personal communication). Many other groups and company's submitted comments. You should contact individual animal protein suppliers for their comments.
CINCINNATI POST - Tuesday, March 26, 1996
By: Kevin MatthewsLONDON - You know the world's turned upside down when McDonald's stops selling hamburgers. Yet that is what happened in Britain this weekend and, as this column is written, it is impossible to buy a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder with Cheese anywhere between Land's End and the tip of Scotland.
The immediate cause is something called ''mad cow disease'' or, if you want to be technical, bovine spongiform encephalopathy. In humans, it is called Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. In cows and humans, the effect of the disease is the same. After a lengthy incubation period, the disease produces holes in brain tissue.
In humans, the incubation period lasts roughly 15 years. First, the victim shows signs of depression. Then, he can't walk. Memory loss and speech impairment come next, followed by blindness, inability to control bodily functions, and then death. There is no cure for this disease once it infects your body.
Although Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease was around before mad cow disease, scientists were able to link them for two reasons. First, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease usually strikes the elderly. But at least 10 cases have been diagnosed in patients younger than 42. Moreover, in all of these cases, the breakdown of brain tissue was similar, if not identical, to that found in cows.
The evidence was enough to convince government scientists who, only a month ago, still claimed there was only a ''remote theoretical risk'' linking the two. For humans, an epidemic is possible which, according to one newspaper, will rival AIDS. As many as 100,000 people might be infected, according to some reports.
The origins of mad cow disease stretch back to the 1970s when Britain's beef industry began feeding cattle a diet based on animal carcasses. ''In practice,'' according to a Parliamentary report, ''this meant that cows, which are herbivores, were eating sheepmeat, some of which was infected with scrapie, a disease which has been known for 250 years.''
Shortly before the 1979 election, the country's last Labour government was told there was a ''problem'' and moved to tighten controls on the beef industry. Then, Margaret Thatcher came to power. Within four months a Royal Commission warned that feeding animal waste to cattle risked transmitting new diseases to humans. But this was at a time when the Conservatives had promised massive deregulation of industry. Thatcher relaxed hygiene rules at the behest of beef producers.
Britain has nothing like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to protect consumers. That job is left to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. In any contest between consumers and producers, MAFF consistently came down on the side of the beef industry. The reason was simple: Britain's agricultural businesses are closely linked to the Conservative Party. So, Thatcher and her ministers left it to the beef industry ''to determine how best to produce a high quality product.''
Within five years, the first cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy were being reported. Even so, the government consistently refused to consider any evidence that they were facing a potential calamity. Offered a same-day test making it possible to determine if cattle were infected with the disease, MAFF said no due to the cost to the industry. The use of sheep entrails as feed was banned in 1989. But by then, much damage had apparently been done. To this day, concern remains that some British herds are still infected.
Even if mad cow disease and its human equivalent does not make the jump across the Atlantic, this episode ought to send a powerful message to everyone, but especially to politicians, who have made a fetish out of bashing America's regulatory agencies.
There are examples galore of times when these agencies go beyond what anyone would call common sense. But before junking every rule and regulation safeguarding the food we eat, the water we drink, and the air we breathe, consider what happens when profit is put above safety.
The lesson isn't a new one. Nearly two centuries ago, a British peer, Lord Thurlow, asked: ''Did you ever expect a corporation to have a conscience, when it has no soul to be damned, and no body to be kicked?''
The marriage of free enterprise with advanced technology has worked wonders. But if the advantages are great, so are the risks. Without a soul to be damned, or a body to be kicked, the next best way of ensuring the welfare of every citizen is to see that business plays by the rules. That has not happened in Britain; now everyone who ate British meat in the mid-1980s could pay a very high price.
By Charles Clover, Environment Editor ... Electronic Telegraph ... June 24BEEF from many EU countries is now more likely to be contaminated with BSE than British beef, European vets have concluded from evidence that thousands of cases in Europe have not been reported. The Federation of Veterinarians in Europe will call on Franz Fischler, Agriculture Commissioner, this week to impose a British-style ban on specified beef offals throughout the EU. It will also seek tighter monitoring of farms, abattoirs and butchers. This follows evidence from Swiss experts of gross under-reporting of BSE by many EU countries.
Prof Marc Vandervelde, head of the Institute of Animal Neurology at the University of Berne, believes that France ought to be declaring around 200 BSE cases a year - instead of the 22 it has so far declared - given the amount of contaminated feed it has imported. It was "astonishing", he said, that France had not had more cases. He is also openly incredulous of Holland, Luxembourg and Belgium which also imported thousands of tons of contaminated feed from Britain in the 1980s but had declared no cases of BSE. Prof Vandervelde joked: "In some countries BSE is banned."
Until common standards are imposed on European beef production, The Daily Telegraph's research indicates that consumers have some justification for refusing to buy beef. British and Swiss beef appears to be the safest in terms of the controls imposed to prevent contaminated material being consumed by humans.
Switzerland has the highest number of reported cases of BSE outside Britain [ 218 ] and is also the most open about the number of cattle at risk. Prof Vandervelde added: "BSE stops at the Swiss border. Some spill-over would be expected but the surrounding countries will not admit it."
His colleagues have calculated that the whole Swiss dairy herd, some 800,000 cows out of a total herd of 1.7 million, was at risk of exposure to contaminated feed imported from Britain, through France. Of these, 200,000 dairy cows, mostly the older ones, are estimated to have been exposed to around 10,000 tons of contaminated feed. Experts believe that all the Swiss cases of BSE arose from these animals. Swiss cases of BSE are no longer increasing, thanks to the same controls used in Britain.
There was a danger that the French could be recycling their own BSE in other animal food Nature recently reported that contaminated feed from Britain, could have been fed to cattle in France until this year. Prof Vandervelde said: "We would expect to see a couple of hundred cattle a year with BSE. It wouldn't be wrong to say that at least a couple of hundred thousand cattle had been exposed. Most of our imported feed came from France. It would be difficult not to find a similar incidence of the disease as in Switzerland."
The French herd is 11 million cows, more than 10 times the total Swiss herd. If the food was distributed evenly the number of cases might be expected to be significantly higher. "If you have a bad surveillance system, you are not going to see it. If you make the disease notifiable but provide no compensation for farmers the cases will not be reported," Prof Vandervelde said.
France has a ban on "specified offals" but this applies only to cattle born before 1991. As a result, said Prof Vandervelde, there is no way of knowing if French beef is safe for human consumption. It was also unclear whether French rendering processes were safe. There was a danger that the French could be recycling their own BSE in other animal food.
We may never know the full extent of the missing cases of BSE, says Prof Vandervelde, because the factors affecting the distribution of the contaminated feed are not understood. "One would have to have an army of detectives to answer these questions," he said. The European Commision neither has, not intends to deploy such an army.
Greater certainty may come from tracing the 57,900 pure-bred breeding cattle exported from 1985 to 1991. A report by European scientists last week said that around 1,668 [or 2.9%] of these might be expected statistically to have contracted BSE. One of the authors, Prof Otto Christian Straub, said that a list of countries most at risk could be compiled, based on those who had imported the most dairy cattle.
The figures are still being analysed by the Central Veterinary Laboratory in Weybridge, Surrey. British vets believe that the "at risk" list will be topped by Portugal (which imported 12,000 head of cattle and has so far declared only seven cases of BSE), followed by Spain (which has declared none) and the Netherlands (none).
Francis Anthony, president of the Federation of Veterinarians in Europe, said: "We are calling on Commissioner Fischler to insist on full surveillance of European herds. We want 100 per cent removal of specified offals and proper verification to ensure that countries are doing it. "If our beef is suspect, theirs is potentially lethal."
The Washington Post, April 22, 1996
By: Edward M. KennedyRepublican legislation in Congress to "reform" the Food and Drug Administration would dramatically weaken the FDA's ability to protect the public health. The assault on the FDA is particularly serious, because the agency is responsible for the safety of a quarter of all the products in the American economy -- especially the food we eat and the prescription drugs we take.
The Republican bills would water down requirements that guarantee theseproducts are safe and effective. They would turn over many of the FDA's most important functions to private industry, with built-in conflicts of interest. They would give preference to products approved in Europe and other foreign countries, where the public is less well protected. And they would saddle the agency with so many new bureaucratic requirements and so much red tape that it would be unable to do its job. If the Republican proposals are enacted, Americans can expect many more drug disasters like thalidomide and DES, medical device failures like the Dalkon shield, lethal vaccines like the Cutter polio vaccine, threats to the blood supply and even threats to the food supply, such as the "mad cow disease," which has rocked the British beef industry.
The Republican proposals, by eliminating essential FDA oversight of the production of medical products, threaten the safety of drugs, medical devices, blood and vaccines. A minor manufacturing change that alters the solvent used to kill viruses in blood products can result in ineffective sterilization of the blood, risking the transmission of AIDS or hepatitis.A change in the filters used to produce vaccines can turn a protective vaccine into a killer. A change in filters used to produce the Cutter polio vaccine resulted in 200 cases of polio in the 1950s, before the FDA required more rigorous standards. Under the Republican bills, the agency would no longer be permitted to review such manufacturing changes in advance to ensure that the public is protected.
The House Republican bill eliminates existing requirements for the FDA to approve certain products that can be dangerous to public health -- such as leaky surgical gloves or faulty diagnostic tests. In recent weeks, it was revealed that a defective new AIDS test kit was distributed to 2 million patients abroad. American consumers, however, were spared exposure to this dangerous product.
The Senate bill gives the FDA only 90 days to review certain new food additives, even though these additives can result in the involuntary exposure of millions of Americans to potentially harmful substances. The Dalkon shield, used to prevent pregnancy, injured 90,000 women because of a design flaw. This tragedy led to legislation strengthening FDA oversight of medical devices. The Shiley heart valve proved vulnerable to breakage, killing the patients. Before the valve was withdrawn, the manufacturer proposed a new version six times more dangerous than the original. The FDA rejected it, but 4,000 patients received it in Europe. Under the Republican bills, the FDA's ability to prevent such tragedies would be seriously compromised.
The House bill would reduce standards for approving a new use for a drug already approved for another purpose. The lower standard would restore the pre-1962 requirements that brought us DES. In recent years, drugs approved for life-threatening heart arrhythmias were widely prescribed for mild arrhythmias. This "off-label" use of the drug has been estimated to have caused as many as 50,000 deaths.
Both the Senate and the House bills contain an inherent and outrageousconflict of interest. They are designed to shift responsibility for product approval from the independent experts at the FDA to private businesses. The profitability of these firms would depend on the fees they attracted from the very companies whose products they review. The Senate bill pretends to give the FDA final approval of the decisions of these private reviewers, but the time frames for action are so short and the rules for oversight so limited that the agency would be reduced to little more than a rubber stamp. The House bill is even more extreme, removing the FDA from certain product approvals altogether.
As hard as it may be to believe, another provision in the bills would prohibit the FDA from requiring companies to make information available to patients on possible dangers of prescription drugs. At a time when hospitalizations from improper use of prescription drugs by senior citizens cost Medicare $20 billion a year, it is foolish to deny patients information they need to monitor their use of medications. The Republican bills also contain provisions to micromanage the agency. The strategy of the Republicans and their special interest constituency is clear: Set up procedures that make it impossible for regulatory agencies to protect the public, and then use their failures as an excuse to dismantle them.
The assault on the FDA is fueled by a well-funded campaign alleging that patients are suffering because foot-dragging by the agency is denying them needed drugs already approved in foreign countries. Much of the funding for this campaign comes from tobacco companies, who have their own reasons to discredit the FDA. In fact, FDA drug review time was cut by 40 percent between 1987 and 1993. According to the nonpartisan congressional General Accounting Office, by 1993 the United States was reviewing drugs as fast as, or faster than, Great Britain and other foreign countries. Review times in the United States have dropped even farther since.
And unlike foreign approval authorities, the FDA has combined speed withsafety. Between 1970 and 1992, 56 drugs were introduced in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States that subsequently had to be withdrawn because they were unsafe. Only nine had been approved in this country, compared with 31 in France, 30 in Germany and 23 in Great Britain.
The FDA is not perfect, but it is still renowned as one of the most effective regulatory agencies in the world. There is always room for improvement, but the Republican proposal is a blueprint for demolition, not modernization, and Congress should reject it.
The writer is a Democratic senator from Massachusetts
"To date, we've purchased more than 14 million pounds of beef products at a cost of about $13 million since we announced an accelerated beef purchase initiative May 1," Glickman said. "These purchases represent the Clinton Administration's commitment to combating record-low prices for cattle producers," Glickman said.
USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service, the agency which processes the purchase contracts, said additional offers to purchase beef are scheduled for June 28 and weekly thereafter until 1996-97 school year purchases have been completed. Total purchases of frozen ground beef since the program was announced May 17, follow:
Fine Ground: 9,504,000 pounds, $8,655,756 Reprocessing Beef: 4,830,000 pounds, $4,115,425 1-Pound Chubs: 198,000 pounds, $257,048
On April 26, 1996, Secretary Glickman authorized emergency grazing on Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) in numerous southern plains counties and announced that the reduction in CRP rental payments would be 5% for each month CRP acreage is grazed, up to a maximum of 25%, rather than the 25% reduction previously assessed for any grazing of CRP acreage.
On April 30, as part of a 5-point plan to direct assistance to cattle producers, President Clinton directed Secretary Glickman to open all but the most environmentally sensitive CRP acres to emergency haying and grazing.
On May 23, 1996, Secretary Glickman announced plans to reprogram $16.4 million to the Emergency Loan Program to replenish exhausted funds in that program, making an additional $56 million in loans available.
On May 24, 1996, at the request of President Clinton, Secretary Glickman announced authorization for the Noninsured Assistance Program (NAP) to cover losses on small grains used for forage.
On June 7, 1996, Secretary Glickman announced that insured dryland cotton farmers in west Texas and east New Mexico would have to wait only seven days after the final planting date, rather than the standard 25 days, to put their land to another use, such as planting grain sorghum, if the cotton failed to make a stand after seven days from the final planting date. If a stand is not produced, the acreage planted to cotton would be considered as a total loss under the crop insurance program, assuming compliance with all other provisions.
On July 1, 1996, President Clinton declared a state of emergency in the Southwest and other areas adversely affected by weather, warranting the release of the Feed Grain Disaster Reserve. With this authority, Secretary Glickman will release feed grain stocks held in the Disaster Reserve. Up to 16 million bushels of grain will be sold on the open market on a competitive bid basis and the proceeds will be used to make cost-share assistance available to eligible livestock producers who have suffered a substantial loss of normal feed production and do not have adequate feed to maintain their eligible livestock.
On January, 25,1996, Secretary Glickman announced that USDA would permit farmers with CRP contracts expiring in 1996 to terminate their CRP contracts early and bring that acreage back into production this crop year.
On April 5, 1996, one day after the farm bill was signed, Secretary Glickman implemented a provision in the legislation that allows farmers with certain CRP land enrolled in the program for at least 5 years to terminate their CRP contracts early and to return that acreage to crop production.
Secretary Glickman, as part of President Clinton's 5-point plan to assist livestock producers, increased the availability of export credit guarantees for a number of livestock and meat products to countries such as Mexico, Egypt, Estonia, Turkey, Poland, Morocco, Central America, Croatia, Lithuania, and Russia.
For Fiscal Year 1996, USDA has made available $11.6 million in export market development funds under the Market Access and Foreign Market Development Programs to the U.S. Meat Export Federation. With the help of these programs, U.S. beef and pork exports have reached record levels.
Secretary Glickman, at President Clinton's request, has expedited purchases of beef and dairy products for school meals and food assistance programs. Since April 30, USDA has purchased more than 14 million pounds of beef products at a cost of about $13 million, with additional purchases scheduled weekly.
In addition to Secretary Glickman's trips in April to west Texas and southern Kansas and Deputy Secretary Rominger's trip to Lubbock, Texas in June to tour drought-affected areas, the Clinton Administration continues to monitor weather and market conditions closely in consideration of additional actions as needed.
THE 250-year-old border town of Guerrero Viejo was once the vibrant hub of this desert region and boasted a printing press, a hospital and a population of 40,000. Wars and revolutions then took their toll, but what finished the place off was the damming of the Rio Grande a few miles downstream in 1953.
Torrential rains filled the vast Lake Falcon far quicker than expected and, within a year, most of Guerrero Viejo had vanished beneath the rising waters.
The last 3,000 inhabitants fled to new purpose-built housing near the dam, never believing they would see their old homes again, but they reckoned without the great drought of 1996.
After three virtually rainless years, the 50-mile lake has shrunk to a third of its normal size and fallen nearly 50ft. The lost town of Guerrero Viejo has miraculously resurfaced.
A guide took me there last week. We turned off an empty Mexican road, drove ten miles down a dirt track, and in temperatures of 100F (37C) explored the deserted, sun-baked ruins with their tantalising hints of Guerrero Viejo's past glories.
The beautiful sandstone church with its carved pillars and Roman arches still stands, though the back wall and part of the roof have fallen in. There are faded maroon-and-yellow tiles on the floor, and high on the walls fleur-de-lys are visible on remnants of plasterwork. Someone has recently made a small shrine with plastic flowers and a picture of the Virgin Mary. The church faces what was obviously once a fine town square. The pavements are cracked and tilted, but there is still a gazebo in the centre ringed by crumbling stone benches, and a statue's pedestal. A plaque dated 1927 honours the town's grupo femenil, the women's club.
In the town square's far corner are the skeletal remains of the Hotel Flores, once famous for its dances, and a pristine stretch of cobbled street. Nearer the receding lake is the colonnaded schoolhouse. Its classrooms are carpeted with dried mud and overrun by frogs and snakes. The houses are mostly rubble, playgrounds for darting lizards.
In one of the few houses high enough to escape inundation, we found an old Mexican woman named Julia Zamora, who refused to leave in 1953 and stayed on with her goats. More than 40 years later she is developing a new business purveyor of cold drinks to the growing number of visitors lured by word of Guerrero Viejo's reappearance. This tough old lady is one of the very few beneficiaries of a drought that first took hold in this southernmost point of Texas about three years ago and now blights the entire Southwest.
It is a gathering crisis that threatens farmers with ruin on a scale not seen since the Dust Bowl days of the 1930s, immortalised in John Steinbeck's novel, The Grapes of Wrath. Rick Perry, the Texas agriculture commissioner, predicts the drought will cost his state $6.5 billion (£4.27 billion) this year, making it the most costly natural disaster in its history.
Texas is America's biggest cotton producer, but the soil is so parched that most of this year's crop has withered and died. The state's total wheat harvest is expected to be just 57 million bushels, down from 129 million in 1992. Hardest hit of all are the cattle ranchers who have seen feed prices nearly triple, rendering every cow in Texas economically unviable. As ranchers rush to sell their herds, beef prices are plummeting.
At daybreak in the small east Texan town of Groesbeck, the line of ranchers' lorries and trailers waiting to sell cattle at the auction yards stretches down the highway. "If the drought goes on like this another year 75 per cent of the cows will be gone," complained one rancher, Walton Harter. "Can't keep 'em. Ain't nothing for them to eat."
Parked outside the auction yards was a lorry loaded with hay. Its owner was selling the hay for an exorbitant $145 a tonne.
One group of west Texas ranchers have employed an aviation company to "seed" clouds with chemicals that supposedly generate rain. The mayors of two big west Texan towns, Childress and San Angelo, have issued official proclamations urging their people to pray for rain. Ranchers have revived the nearly moribund practice of burning prickles off cacti with butane torches so that their cattle can eat them.
Farmers are not the only victims. Illegal Mexican immigrants have died of dehydration while crossing the desert borders. Arizona and New Mexico have suffered huge forest fires, and some Texas counties banned fireworks at their Independence Day celebrations yesterday.