Food Safety

By Ben Goad

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Saturday announced a long-sought end to the practice of slaughtering sick and hurt cows for meat, answering calls for increased food safety that followed last year’s record recall of 143 million pounds of beef from a Chino slaughterhouse.

“As part of our commitment to public health, our Agriculture Department is closing a loophole in the system to ensure that diseased cows don’t find their way into the food supply,” Obama said during his weekly radio address.

The new regulation is expected to be published this week in the federal register and would take affect 30 days later, said Amanda Eamich, spokeswoman for the Department’s Food Safety Inspection Service.

Under previous rules, most “downer cows” — those unable to stand for slaughter — were banned from the food supply because they present a greater risk of illness, including deadly mad cow disease. But in cases when a cow went down after an initial inspection at a meat plant, they could still be slaughtered for beef if they passed a second inspection given by federal veterinary inspector.

The exception was embraced by the meat industry and supported by the Bush administration until employees at Chino’s Westland/Hallmark Meat Company were found to have illegally slaughtered downer cows without the second inspection.

The violation was captured on video by an undercover investigator for the Humane Society of the United States, who worked as an employee at the plant in late 2007. Beyond the illegal slaughter, the footage showed plant employees beating, shocking and otherwise mistreating downer cows, apparently so they would stand up and walk on their own into the “kill box.”

The footage was released late last January, sparking a media firestorm that was amplified by the revelation that the plant was one of the top three suppliers of beef to the National School Lunch program. The recall — the largest of its kind in U.S. history — was ordered on Feb. 17, though tens of millions of pounds of the beef had already been eaten, much of it by schoolchildren.

CAUTION AND FEAR

No illnesses have been connected to the recalled meat, and officials have described the danger as extremely low. Still, the recall put Westland/Hallmark out of business and prompted a series of congressional hearings. The Chino meat scandal fueled international concerns about the safety of U.S. meat, particularly in South Korea, which banned American beef after cow in Washington state tested positive for mad cow disease in 2003. In the aftermath of the recall, the Bush administration in May publicly reversed its stance that a ban on the slaughter of so-called downer cows was unnecessary. Then Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer said the agency would have new regulations in place within months. But the proposal stalled, and it was never completed before the Bush administration left office in January. In an interview last month at his Washington office, newly installed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said enacting a downer ban was a top priority, but a timeline was uncertain until Obama’s announcement.

“This rule is designed to enhance consumer confidence and humane handling standards and will provide clear guidance that non-ambulatory cattle will not be allowed to enter the human food supply,” Vilsack said in a statement released Saturday. “It is a step forward for both food safety and the standards for humane treatment of animals.”

MOVE APPLAUDED

Humane Society president Wayne Pacelle applauded Obama for moving to finalize the ban within his first 50 days in office after “foot dragging on the issue by the previous administration.” The Humane Society has sought a ban since before the 2003 mad cow scare.

“Finally, the federal government is putting a stop to the inhumane and reckless practice of dragging and otherwise abusing downer cows in order to slaughter them for human consumption,” Pacelle said.

In addition to the ban, Obama said he plans to spend $1 billion to bolster the ranks of federal food inspectors, a measure pushed by lawmakers during the hearings that followed the recall. It was unclear Saturday whether the inspectors would go to the Food Safety Inspection Service, which is charged with ensuring meat safety, or the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates produce and medicine.

Ultimately, the question could be moot. Vilsack has said he favors a single-agency approach to food safety to lessen confusion surrounding recent scares, including the recall of peanut butter that killed nine people this year.

Obama said Saturday that he would convene a Food Safety Working Group, which could take up the issue.

“This Working Group will bring together cabinet secretaries and senior officials to advise me on how we can upgrade our food safety laws for the 21st century; foster coordination throughout government; and ensure that we are not just designing laws that will keep the American people safe, but enforcing them,” Obama said.