Unbelievable - Meat from Diseased Animals Approved for Consumers

[Guest guest]

Just got this in from a regular newsletter I receive; thought you might be

interested and want to take action. I have checked this against my three (3)

" Hoax " websites and it appears on none of them.

Carol

If you are a meat eater, this is of great interest to you. Please read this

and please call AND write to your congressman, senators, and your governor.

Let them know we want our food wholesome and clean.

Meat from Diseased Animals Approved for Consumers

Scripps News Service

By: LANCE GAY

July 14, 2000

WASHINGTON - The federal agency overseeing food inspection is imposing new

rules reclassifying as safe for human consumption animal carcasses with

cancers, tumors and open sores.

Federal meat inspectors and consumer groups are protesting the move to

classify tumors and open sores as aesthetic problems, which permits the meat

to get the government's purple seal of approval as a wholesome food product.

" I don't want to eat pus from a chicken that has pneumonia. I think it's

gross, " said Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass

Energy Project. " Most Americans don't want to eat this sort of contamination

in their meals. "

Delmer , a federal food inspector for 41 years who lives in Renlap,

Ala., said he's so revolted by the lowering of food wholesomeness standards

that he doesn't buy meat at the supermarket anymore because he doesn't trust

that it is safe to eat.

" I eat very little to no meat, but sardines and fish, " said , president

of the National Joint Council of Meat Inspection Locals, a union of 7,000

meat inspectors nationwide affiliated with the American Federation of

Government Employees. He said he's trying to get his wife to stop eating

meat. " I've told her what she's eating. "

The union is battling related Agriculture Department plans to rely on

scientific testing of samples of butchered meats to determine the

wholesomeness of meat, rather than traditional item-by-item scrutiny by

federal inspectors. A 1959 federal law requires inspectors from the

Agriculture Department's Food Inspection and Safety System to inspect all

slaughtered animals before they can be sold for human consumption.

The Agriculture Department began implementing the new policy as part of a

pilot project in 24 slaughter houses last October, and plans to expand the

system nationwide covering poultry, beef and pork. The agency this month

extended until Aug. 29 the time for the public to comment on the regulations,

and won't issue final rules until after the comments are received.

In 1998, the inspections and safety system reclassified an array of animal

diseases as being " defects that rarely or never present a direct public

health risk " and said " unaffected carcass portions " could be passed on to

consumers by cutting out lesions.

Among animal diseases the agency said don't present a health danger are:

- Cancer;

- A pneumonia of poultry called airsacculitis;

- Glandular swellings or lymphomas;

- Sores;

- Infectious arthritis;

- Diseases caused by intestinal worms.

In the case of tumors, the guidelines state: " remove localized lesion(s) and

pass unaffected carcass portions. "

" They just cut off the areas,'' said Carol Blake, spokeswoman for the

Agriculture Department's inspection and safety system.

But and consumer groups say production lines are moving so fast that

they can't catch all the diseased carcasses, and some are ending up on

supermarket shelves.

" When I started inspecting, inspectors were looking at 13 birds a minute,

then 40, and now it's 91 birds a minute with three inspectors. You cannot do

your job with 91 birds a minute, " said.

The Agriculture Department is also experimenting with proposed rules that

would require federal food inspectors to monitor what the plant employees are

doing, rather than inspecting each carcass individually. They are aimed at

bringing a new scientific approach to federal meat inspection to cut down on

E. coli bacteria and other contamination.

The inspection and safety agency says a survey of pilot plants using the new

system concluded that less than 1 percent of the poultry examined at the end

of the production line and released for public consumption was unwholesome.

At a public hearing on the findings this year, of

Agriculture's division of field operations admitted that defective carcasses

are being approved for human use under the pilot program.

" Absolutely. There's no system that we are aware of that is capable of

removing every defect from the process, " she said.

Felicia Nestor, director of the Government Accountability Project, a

Washington watchdog group, said the pilot project found chickens with higher

levels of fecal and other contamination than in traditional methods of

inspecting.

" A lot of diseased animals are going out, " she said.

A. Randolph, a federal appeals court judge, this month said federal

food safety laws require meat and poultry inspectors to examine every carcass

that moves through slaughterhouses and processing plants.

" The laws clearly contemplate that when inspections are done, it will be

federal inspectors, rather than private employees, who will make the critical

determination whether a product is adulterated or unadulterated, " he said.

" Under the proposed plan, federal inspectors would be inspecting people, not

carcasses. "

On the Net:

The Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service <A

HREF= " USDA " >http://www.fsis.usda.gov</A>.

The federal inspectors web site is <A HREF= " inspectors " >http://www.the-inspect

or.com</A>

(Lance Gay writes for Scripps News Service. Contact him at <A

HREF= " Lance Gay " >gayl@...</A> )

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