USDA Finally Bares Fangs to Meat Industry on E. Coli

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/agrilifetoday/5226014847/sizes/z/in/photostream/">agrilifetoday</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Yesterday, I pointed to Cargill’s latest salmonella-tainted turkey problem and wondered whether the USDA and other regulatory watchdogs would ever bare their fangs against the meat industry’s power and recklessness with public health.

As if in response, the agency let loose a formidable growl. It announced it had ramped up oversight of the industry and its habit of sending out ground beef tainted with various strains of E. coli.

In the past, the USDA had classified only one strain of E. coli, known as 0157, as an “adulterant,” making it illegal to sell. The deadly E. coli strain earned its outlaw status after the infamous Jack in the Box outbreak of 1993, which sickened 700 people and killed four.

In the years since, six other E. coli strains have risen up—and now account for two-thirds of E. coli sicknesses, reports Food Safety News. Neither the USDA nor the meat industry tested for them; people got sick. Back in June, Michele Simon laid out the decade-plus history of outbreaks from non-0157 E. coli strains and the USDA’s failure to address the problem.

All of that will change with the new rules. Inspectors will now test for the pathogens, and meat from any samples that test positive will be banned from being sold raw and have to be diverted to cooked products like frozen dinners.

Predictably, the meat industry is shrieking in response. In an emailed statement (not available online), the American Meat Institute declared:

Imposing this new regulatory program on ground beef will cost tens of millions of federal and industry dollars—costs that likely will be borne by taxpayers and consumers. It is neither likely to yield a significant public health benefit nor is it good public policy.

This is nonsense. According to Food Safety News’ Helena Bottemiller, the USDA reckons the new testing rules will cost the industry no more than $10 million annually—a rounding error compared to the industry’s multibillion-dollar annual revenues. And in a Tuesday morning press conference, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told reporters that the rules would costs the USDA $500,00 and $750,000 annually—hardly a backbreaker for taxpayers. Seattle-based Bill Marler, a prominent food safety advocate who has pushed hard for the new rules, told ObamaFoodorama that the USDA’s move “will have a profound positive impact on public health in reducing foodborne illness.”

The USDA deserves praise for standing up the to meat industry on the so called “big six” non-0157 E. coli strains. But the fact remains that other deadly pathogens, including the antibiotic-resistant strain of salmonella that Cargill can’t seem to keep out of its ground turkey, aren’t treated as “adulterants,” meaning that neither companies nor USDA inspectors are obliged to test for them. Why the inaction? As the current case shows, the USDA moves glacially in matters that contradict the meat industry’s interests. But the case for outlawing resistant salmonella is strong.

Here’s how the USDA describes the form of salmonella that keeps getting into Cargill’s turkey:

The outbreak strain of Salmonella Heidelberg is resistant to several commonly prescribed antibiotics; this antibiotic resistance may be associated with an increased risk of hospitalization or possible treatment failure in infected individuals.

“Treatment failure” is, of course, a euphemism for “death.” Addressing the problem will require more than just testing for antibiotic-resistant pathogens or giving them “adulterant” status. It will also mean reckoning squarely with the ongoing disaster of routine antibiotic use on factory farms—something the USDA has cravenly avoided doing.

If and when it takes on antibiotic use, the meat industry’s main watchdog will show the public that it has a bite to back up its bark.

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate