Safety of meat is a problem we can't ignore

If it's not Mad Cow Disease, it's E. coli. Is it time for all red-blooded American carnivores to go vegan?

If you're not ready for that leap, you'll be glad the feds are finally cracking down on meat inspections.

Last week the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced the largest recall in history - 25 million pounds of beef that may have been contaminated with E. coli bacteria. The feds shut down a Nebraska meat-processing plant that provides meat to Burger King, Boston Market, Wal-Mart, Sam's Club and Safeway supermarkets. Those businesses voluntarily pulled the beef from their outlets.

So far, all 17 cases of illness associated with the tainted beef have been in Colorado.

Every year about 9,000 people, most of them children and old people, die from contaminated food. Millions more - estimates range from 6 million to 33 million people - get sick from food-borne illnesses. In 1993, four children died and hundreds of others were sickened after eating hamburgers tainted with a new strain of E. coli, the bacteria found in the human intestinal tract, at Jack-in-the-Box restaurants in the Northwest.

Practices and standards

The huge quantity of potentially tainted meat - and the potential for the rapid and widespread occurrence of illness - points up the need for more stringent meat inspection practices and standards. Federal inspectors found alarming weaknesses in the Nebraska plant's quality control and record-keeping system. Meat that wasn't used one day was thrown in with the next day's batch to make frozen patties. The company that owns the processing plant, Hudson Foods of Rogers, Ark., suggests the contamination came from one of the seven slaughterhouses that supplied the raw meat.

Over the next three years, a new meat inspection system will be phased in at packing plants to replace the current hit and miss, poke and sniff methods. Meat processors will be required to use machinery to test for bacterial contamination and will be more closely monitored by USDA inspectors. Inspectors will look closely at records on cleanliness, production and refrigerator temperatures.

The new techniques will not eliminate some contaminants like salmonella, but will reduce their levels in meat and poultry plants. There will be zero tolerance, however, for the strain of E. coli found in the hamburger that caused the 1993 deaths.

Eating out more

New standards are essential, especially given the realities of our food distribution system and eating patterns. Our food is prepared a long way from where it is eaten, with many more opportunities for bugs to jump on along the way. Americans today eat out more than families did 20 years ago, exposing many more people to the risks of contaminated food. And bacteria, like E. coli and other nasties, continue to evolve and become more virulent.

Stringent new meat inspection is called for, but inspectors can't be everywhere. Correcting food safety problems with inspections is good. Preventing them is better.