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http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/21/national/21MEAT.html

Poultry Plant Slow to Report Sharp Increase in Bacteria

By BUD HAZELKORN

Pennsylvania poultry plant suspected of being a source of a listeria outbreak that has killed eight people detected a sharp rise in listeria around the time of the outbreak last summer but did not tell the government until late September, Agriculture Department officials said yesterday.

Officials of the company, Wampler Foods have previously said that all the test results were in a file drawer available to government inspectors last summer. Regulators closed the plant in October, but it reopened a month later after a thorough cleaning.

Critics say this dispute over notification illustrates how loose the government's regulation has been under a new system that places more responsibility for safety on the meat companies.

Agriculture Department officials said they would have clamped down sooner if they had known about what they called a "spike" in Wampler's test results. But meat companies are typically not required to share the results of their own bacteria tests. Department officials say they are strengthening the rules.

The officials said Wampler's tests detected an increase in general types of listeria, most of them harmless. But scientists say such tests are the first sign that a plant might be harboring listeria Monocytogenes, the deadly type in the recent outbreak, and shipping contaminated products. Besides the eight deaths, 54 people have become ill since July in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and six other states.

Government officials closed the Wampler plant on Oct. 13 after inspectors found the strain of listeria monocytogenes that caused the deaths in the plant's drains. Wampler recalled 27 million pounds of turkey and poultry products. It recovered five million pounds.

Officials at Wampler, a part of Pilgrim's Pride, the nation's second-largest poultry company, said no returned meat had tested positive for the strain that caused the outbreak.

Identical bacteria have been found in turkey processed by an unrelated company, J. L. Foods in Camden, and health officials say it is unclear how most of the victims became ill.

Vince Erthal, a former inspector at the Wampler plant, said earlier this month that it had had persistent sanitation problems. Mr. Erthal said that for two years, he was unable to persuade other Agriculture Department officials to crack down on the plant.

Mr. Erthal, who moved to another plant in September, said Wampler employees had told him informally at various times that the company's tests had found general types of listeria in the plant. But he said he did not know about the increase in the listeria levels last summer.

Mr. Erthal and officials at the Food Safety and Inspection Service of the Agriculture Department also said the company never formally offered to share the results of its testing with the government.

At issue now is what constitutes notification and whether the inspection agency has enough controls to verify the safety measures that a company says it is taking.

Ron Morris, the senior vice president for turkey operations at Pilgrim's Pride, said the Wampler plant added listeria testing to its hazard-control plan in spring 2000. The company summarized the change at the start of the plan, Mr. Morris said.

Wampler officials said the inspectors should have seen that and noted the change in government records.

Mr. Morris said that since then, the company routinely filed its listeria test results in a drawer marked "U.S.D.A.," where inspectors could review them. The company disinfected its equipment whenever it found listeria, he said.

But Steven Cohen, a spokesman for the inspection service, said that at least five inspectors at the plant said they never saw any sign that the company had added bacterial testing to its plan and that none were told that the testing logs were in the drawer.

Mr. Erthal added that to avoid tension, inspectors were typically told to ask company employees for records rather than to search for them on their own.

After the strain of listeria in the outbreak was found in the plant's drains, Mr. Cohen said, Wampler provided records showing that the percentage of tests that detected listeria was sharply higher in July and August than in May, June or September.

Company officials said it was not unusual for listeria levels to rise in the summer. But Mr. Cohen said that whatever the company did to try eliminate the bacteria, "it was not effective."

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