Turning Up Heat on Meat Inspections : Agriculture Secretary Espy vows to develop a much-needed food safety program

President Clinton has responded appropriately to an outbreak of illness linked to contaminated hamburger meat by ordering the Department of Agriculture to hire more meat and poultry inspectors. But, as with other regulatory agencies that have been neglected over the last 12 years, he and Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy must do a lot more to reinvigorate the USDA.

The department’s beleaguered $500-million meat and poultry inspection program is a good place to start. Questions about the shortage of inspectors, and the effectiveness of inspection procedures themselves, have surfaced after an outbreak of food poisoning from contaminated hamburgers at Jack-in-the-Box restaurants in Washington, Nevada and Idaho. One boy died and at least 400 people became ill when they consumed meat that had been contaminated with E. coli bacteria.

To ease public fears, the Agriculture Department issued new food preparation standards requiring that cooking temperatures for hamburgers be raised from 140 degrees to at least 155 degrees to kill any bacteria that may be present in meat.

And on Thursday, the President demonstrated his commitment to the problem by authorizing the department to hire 160 new meat and poultry inspectors.

But continuing attention to this matter will be necessary.

More than a decade of budget cutting and deregulation has significantly reduced the number of agents responsible for inspecting the nation’s more than 9,000 meat and poultry processing plants and slaughterhouses. The ranks of USDA inspectors have dwindled to 7,200, from 8,400 in 1978. Currently 550 positions remain unfilled, so the new hires, while very much needed, hardly begin to address the shortfall.

A dozen federal agencies are responsible for regulating food safety and quality. Together, these agencies spend about $1 billion to administer 35 separate laws. Not surprisingly, given this patchwork of regulations and the varying missions of these institutions, inspection procedures vary widely for products that pose virtually the same health risks to consumers. Meat and poultry, for example, receive better inspection than fish.

Secretary Espy has promised to develop a new food safety program. He should seriously entertain the idea of consolidating the various regulatory agencies. He should also consider modernizing inspections, which still rely on antiquated techniques--like sight, smell and touch--that have been in use for half a century.

Food safety is not the highest-profile issue the Clinton Administration faces, but it’s one that people become all too painfully aware of if there’s a problem.