Denver Post

USDA protections for meat questioned
Fort Morgan case suggests lax enforcement
By David Migoya
Denver Post Staff Writer
 

Sunday, June 30, 2002 - Someone would have to die.

That's what a federal inspector warned it would take to force change at a Fort Morgan slaughterhouse where meat tainted with feces was a recurrent problem.

Someone did die. Dozens were sickened.

Health officials in Milwaukee, where an E. coli outbreak occurred in July 2000, blamed the Excel Corp. plant in Fort Morgan. Excel denied responsibility but reviewed sanitation procedures at the plant.

Little changed.

In the months after the outbreak, federal inspectors actually documented feces-contaminated meat more frequently than before, The Denver Post found.

Despite those violations - coupled with the discovery of salmonella in the plant's ground beef for the first time in three years - the U.S. Department of Agriculture in November 2000 lifted a year-long threat to sanction the plant because of dirty meat.

These events raise questions about meat safety and the zeal with which federal officials and programs protect the public from contamination.

"It's surprising and disheartening that the USDA could approve a company's plan while violations increased," said Caroline Smith DeWaal with the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food-safety advocacy group.

"It's not much of a plan if they can't control visible contamination," Smith DeWaal said. "It's another example of a very flawed system."

Excel officials said their meat is safe and unconnected to the E. coli that killed 3-year-old Brianna Kriefall and sickened more than 60 others who ate E. coli-laced fruit at a Sizzler restaurant salad bar. Subsequent lawsuits against the firm were dismissed on technical grounds.

"Excel had proven . . . that safe and wholesome food was being shipped to consumers," said Ralph Weber, an attorney for Excel.

A USDA spokesman said Excel's operation was acceptable.

"Whatever the plant did satisfied the inspectors on the premises and the scientists that Excel's plan was operating correctly," said Steven Cohen, a spokesman with the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service. "Over time, they got it under control."

In the five months before Brianna's death, records show, federal inspectors cited the Excel plant six times for letting feces contaminate meat. The USDA threatened sanctions and demanded that Excel improve its slaughter processes.

After the girl's death, Excel officials said, they found nothing wrong with the plant's sanitation practices.

"One would presume that the number of violations would decrease while Excel was taking a look and the USDA was investigating Milwaukee," said Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the science center, which often spars with the USDA.

Instead, the number of dirty-meat citations tripled at the plant in the five months after Brianna's death, records show.

"Spot checks (by USDA inspectors) for visible contamination are very different from whether the (company's sanitation) system is working," attorney Weber said.

He said the company takes additional safety steps such as giving meat a steam bath that company tests show kills 99.9 percent of pathogens on carcasses.

Critics said the USDA should have ensured Excel was keeping meat clean before the Milwaukee outbreak. That the violations increased after Brianna died "is downright inexcusable," said Michael Schwochert, a former USDA veterinarian who supervised inspections at Excel until late 1999.

"The USDA is talking one game and playing another," Schwochert said. "We used to say that someone would have to die before anything changed at Fort Morgan and at the USDA. The plant is no worse than others, but the way USDA operates is not an effective enforcement tool."

"Poke-and-sniff' ends

The traditional method of inspecting the nation's beef underwent massive change after four people died from eating undercooked, tainted Jack in the Box hamburgers in 1993.

The culprit was a little-known bacteria called O157:H7, the deadliest variant of E. coli. It originates in the intestines and feces of cattle, and can contaminate meat during the slaughter process.

Soon after, the USDA halted its hands-on "poke-and-sniff" method, used since 1906, where meat was prodded and smelled to see if it was edible and clean.

Instead, USDA required slaughterhouses to identify where problems could occur along their production lines, where bacteria could get onto meat, and what was being done to ensure that didn't happen.

It was dubbed HACCP (pronounced HA-sip), short for Hazard Analysis-Critical Control Points, and Excel was one of the first places where it was applied, in 1998.

The USDA also unveiled a new phrase to the meatpacking industry: zero tolerance. It meant packers couldn't allow feces - the favored breeding ground for E. coli - onto their meat. Violators risked sanctions, which could include withholding the USDA inspection seal that a business such as Excel needs to sell its products.

But zero tolerance was more tolerant than it sounded.

The USDA's rules don't define, and inspectors say they don't know, how often a violation has to occur before a sanction is put into effect.

Some inspectors, who say HACCP gives meatpackers too much leeway, call it Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray.

"The large plants battle the USDA for trying to do its job," said Gary Dahl, president of the American Federation of Government Employees Local 925, which represents USDA inspectors in Colorado.

"It's horribly frustrating to our inspectors. There's no real consistency in getting compliance."

Part of the HACCP system includes lab tests of raw ground beef for E. coli. Those tests found tainted meat at an Indiana grocery store in September 1999.

Its source: Fort Morgan.

During subsequent testing at the plant, E. coli turned up in two more batches of ground beef.

The plant was closed for three days. The USDA threatened another closure if dirty meat continued to be a problem, records show.

Over the next eight months, inspectors found feces on beef carcasses six times.

The USDA issued another warning: "These repetitive fecal findings at your facility demonstrate that your HACCP plan is inadequate," USDA District Manager Ronald Jones wrote Excel plant manager Michael Chabot on May 23, 2000.

"(Y)ou are not taking seriously your responsibility to control food safety hazards and ensure that your HACCP plan is effective," Jones wrote.

Still, Jones said, "before taking further action I am providing you the opportunity to achieve compliance. . . ."

Meat shipments continued. So did violations, records show.

Excel challenges findings

Meanwhile, Excel officials argued the USDA was being unfair.

In June 2000, Excel said the number of violations for fecal contamination made problems appear worse because "defects are found on different parts of the carcass" and are lumped together, records show.

Excel even challenged the federal agency's definition of feces, specifically its color and texture. The USDA told Excel its point was "irrelevant when zero is the standard."

Also in June 2000, Bill Shaffer, the Excel plant's manager of quality assurance, complained the USDA flagged carcasses "for unidentified minute specks" and then checked them "with a fine-tooth comb," records show.

"I've never seen a more contentious relationship between the USDA and a slaughterhouse than at that plant," said William Marler, a Seattle lawyer who was one of several who sued Excel over the Milwaukee outbreak. A judge dismissed the cases in May without ruling on where the E. coli came from.

"The plant challenged just about everything the USDA did," Marler said.

Then, on June 14, 2000, after a series of meetings between officials at USDA and Excel, the agency said Excel's HACCP program was effective.

The suspension threat was shelved, but the plant would have to "consistently demonstrate that your slaughter process is under control," Jones warned in a letter. Future violations could mean the sanctions would be reinstated.

Eight days later, inspectors found feces on a carcass.

When an inspector returned to ensure the contamination had been sliced off - the only method allowed by the USDA to remove feces from meat - "an employee was wiping the fecal (matter) . . . off with his hand."

Also that day, Excel shipped "tri-tips" sirloin meat that Milwaukee County health officials blamed for the outbreak there, records show.

Excel's Weber minimized the importance of violations at the plant, noting that of the 618,000 cattle slaughtered there between January and July 2000, just 10 had visible contamination.

"The contamination was removed in every one of those instances," he said.

Brianna and other Sizzler customers who were sickened hadn't eaten any meat, only fruit. Milwaukee County health officials - not the USDA - said Sizzler restaurant workers contaminated the fruit when they didn't clean a countertop used to prepare both foods.

Excel said its meat wasn't the source of the E. coli. Still, company officials asked a group of plant employees to "take a look for any potential problems" with its slaughter operation, Weber said.

They found none, he said.

In July, the month Brianna died, the government's meat inspectors found no violations for fecal contamination at the plant.

By Aug. 11, 2000, however, inspectors found a fecal smear a foot long and a half-foot wide, records show. By the end of September, inspectors found fecal contamination more than a dozen times in two months - twice the total for the five months before Brianna died.

"What I can't understand is how the USDA could have allowed this to continue," said Nancy Donley, president of Safe Tables Our Priority, a consumer group that represents victims of food-borne illnesses.

"Things were operating properly," USDA's Cohen said, because Excel corrected its problems.

With each new violation, inspectors included the same warning: "Failure to implement effective corrective actions could result in additional regulatory and/or administrative enforcement actions."

Zero tolerance "a crock'

Records show there were more problems, but no consequences, for Excel.

"The zero-tolerance rule is a crock," said Schwochert, the former USDA vet. "They told us that if we found repetitive violations, they'd close the plant. Here we had dozens of violations of zero tolerance. Yet no real action was taken after the three-day suspension, even though violations persisted."

On Nov. 3, 2000, inspectors found one instance of salmonella in ground beef produced at the plant, the first time the virulent bug was found there in nearly three years, records show.

While that wasn't enough to trigger a recall, watchdogs said USDA should have looked closer.

"If a plant's HACCP plan is working ideally, there shouldn't be any salmonella," said Smith DeWaal of the Washington advocacy group.

Excel's lawyer noted that the USDA allows up to five salmonella-test failures in 53 samples.

"Until then we were batting a thousand," Weber said. "We did not fail the standard, so why should USDA have reacted or intervened?"

Six days after the salmonella finding, and despite the growing number of dirty-meat violations, the USDA's regional director told Excel it had "effectively implemented" better procedures to keep meat clean, records show.

Jones' letter did warn Excel: "Please be advised that we consider (zero tolerance) violations . . . as serious in nature. Failure to comply with these requirements in the future could lead to the withholding or suspension of inspection or other appropriate action."

"It's troubling that (Excel) had these problems and continued pumping out the meat, and the USDA didn't take any enforcement action of any kind," said Donley of Safe Tables. "Until there's stronger tools, there's no incentives for the plants to clean up their act."

Two weeks after the warning from Jones, inspectors at the plant found feces on carcasses.

Within the next year, records show, inspectors issued citations for contamination at the Fort Morgan plant another two dozen times.

The USDA took no further action.

David Migoya can be reached at dmigoya@denverpost.com or 303-820-1506.

About Excel Corp.

*The Fort Morgan plant is one of seven beef slaughterhouses owned by Excel in the United States.

*Excel is a subsidiary of Cargill Corp., one of the world's largest food corporations.

*Excel Corp., based in Wichita, is the nation's second-largest beef packer.

*The Fort Morgan plant employs more than 2,000 people and processes more than 4,000 head of cattle each day.