Today’s The USA Today (I never tire of using that) reports that Dean Wyatt, a supervisory veterinarian at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service will tell a congressional hearing today that USDA superiors failed to act on reports of illegal and unsafe slaughterhouse practices, letting suspect operations continue despite public health risks.

The story says Wyatt will detail instances in which he and other inspectors were overruled when citing slaughterhouses for violations such as shocking and butchering days-old calves that were too weak or sick to stand. He also describes being threatened with transfer or demotion after citing a plant for butchering conscious pigs, despite rules that they first be stunned and unconscious.

In 2008 and early 2009, Wyatt ordered suspensions in operations three times at Bushway Packing Inc., in Grand Isle, VT. Among other things, he found downed calves being dragged through pens to slaughter — a violation because contact with excrement can contaminate animals. In each case, he says, managers overruled him and allowed the plant to keep running.

Bushway subsequently made headlines last fall when the Humane Society of the United States filmed undercover video of workers hitting and using electric prods to move calves. The plant was shut down.

CBS Radio called about 5 a.m. for comment – they’re so polite, they always e-mail first to see if I’m awake so they don’t wake the household. As soon as I said, yeah, let’s do it, 1-year-old Sorenne awoke so I missed the first call to change a diaper and provide 8 ounces of milk. But, the reporter at CBS in N.Y. agreed it was a good call, kid first, then radio soundbites, in which I said something along the lines of, I don’t know anything about the specifics of these cases, but the best slaughterhouses won’t be held hostage by a dude with a video camera, and will get way, way out in front of the minimal standards required by USDA. Maybe it’s too early and I’m still dreaming.

Do people really expect government to magically make food safe?

Government sets expectations and minimal standards, that’s why tax dollars are spent, but the whining about a lack of a U.S. Department of Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety has taken on histrionic tones.

Given the ridiculous size of the U.S. budget deficit, and I don’t wanna go all Ross Perot here, but the salary savings from not filling the post have to at least be considered.

Elizabeth Weise writes in today’s USA Today that calls from consumer advocates and politicians are growing louder for the Obama administration to name an undersecretary for food safety at the Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, a position unfilled for more than a year.

What kind of calls? Writing uninformed blog posts is hardly a call. And who are these consumer advocates? How is that defined?

Weise writes  that some consumer advocates say some fights only an undersecretary-level appointee can undertake include:

•Getting needle-tenderized meat, which can push E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella deep into steaks and chops where cooking doesn't easily kill it, labeled so consumers know it shouldn't be eaten rare. A current outbreak linked to this type of meat has sickened 21 people.

•Giving the USDA the right to name not just grocery stores that have sold recalled meat, but also restaurants.

•Using live video to monitor animals in pens, allowing short-staffed inspectors to do more.

Any retail chain concerned about consumers could institute any of those changes today. The best should do so without nagging from the nanny state.
 

Today’s USA Today has a feature story today about meat served in the U.S. school lunch program and asks why certain batches of meat were excluded from a Salmonella-related recall and outbreak last year. What stands out is that the U.S. Department of Agriculture initially refused to match suppliers with positive test results as part of an analysis of 146,000 tests for bacteria including salmonella and E. coli.

USDA spokesman Bobby Gravitz wrote in an e-mail to USA Today that divulging their identities "would discourage companies from contracting to supply product for the National School Lunch Program and hamper our ability to provide the safe and nutritious foods to America's school children."

The newspaper appealed the USDA's decision. On Monday, the department released the names of the companies.

Although one company, Beef Packers Inc., appeared to stand out for the wrong reasons – in 2007 and 2008, its rate of positive tests for salmonella measured almost twice the rate that's typical for the nation's best-performing, high-volume ground beef producers, USA TODAY found -- the company kept getting government business. Since 2003, Beef Packers has garnered almost $60 million in contracts.

That sounds eerily familiar to what happened in the 2005 E. coli O157 outbreak in Wales that killed five-year-old Mason Jones (left) and sickened another 160 kids eating their school lunches, where buyers were quick to look the other way to save a pound. A public inquiry into the outbreak concluded the procurement process was, “seriously flawed in relation to food safety.”

One way to push food safety through the system is to demand continuous improvement from suppliers in terms of lowering the number of pathogen positive results. Any consumer-oriented company is going to insist on evidence of such steps or they will take their business elsewhere. Those overseeing school lunches for U.S. kids should demand the same.

What also stands out is that despite the focus on food safety of the feature and an additional heart-wrenching story about a child sickened 11 years ago through the school lunch program, a third story about a company trying to provide low-cost, healthier, natural (whatever that means) school lunches makes no mention of – food safety. The story cites a sample lunch that may now contain fresh lettuce and tomatoes in a wrap, rather than the canned or cooked variety of fruits and veggies. Fresh is great, but introduces an array of microbial food safety and supplier management issues that isn’t even mentioned. Sorta ironical.

 

Does knowing your farmer make food safer?

Absolutely not.

Maybe if you ask the right questions, and get honest answers, but even then, only a maybe.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new youtube vid has lots of stuff about local and regional, economics but no evidence of why local is better. And nothing about food safety

The 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiative, chaired by Deputy Secretary Merrigan, is the focus of a task force with representatives from agencies across USDA who will help better align the Department's efforts to build stronger local and regional food systems. This week alone, USDA will announce approximately $65 million in funding for 'Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food' initiatives.

To be fair, USDA did announce nearly $10,000 in funding for the University of Minnesota to bring together experts on food safety and regulations for a discussion of marketing to institutions like K-12 schools, colleges, universities, hospitals and other health care facilities.

Leave it to the academics to ask for money to meet. Foods safety needs to be front and center of any food initiative.

And this was my farmer near Guelph, Jeff Wilson (above, right). He had outstanding food safety, long before others started talking about it.