Controlling E. coli in hamburger requires "meat ID" not animal ID

Daryll E. Ray and the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

July 24, 2009

Food safety has been getting a lot of attention lately. In response to the peanut butter, pistachio, and toll house cookie recalls, the House Energy and Safety Committee has approved the Food Safety Enforcement Act of 2009 to strengthen and expand the US Food and Drug Administration's (FDA) role in food safety and inspection. To gauge the response of the agricultural community, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on this legislation.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a White House Food Safety Group was formed by the Obama administration. In July 2009, the Working Group recommended "a new, public health-focused approach to food safety based on three core principles: (1) prioritizing prevention; (2) strengthening surveillance and enforcement; and (3) improving response and recovery"

(http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Fact_Sheet.pdf).

In all this, major-crop and livestock farmers are worried that the move toward increased emphasis on food safety will lead to the FDA inspection of farms as part of its role in protecting the integrity of the food ingredients that are produced by farmers. Many involved in beef production are resistant to an animal identification system that would allow traceback to the farm-level.

At the same time, the meat industry, having freed itself from a government-directed inspection through the use of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program (HACCP), wants to prevent a move back to a greater government involvement in the inspection of meat and meat products.

When considering issues of major importance to a sector--which this one definitely is in the case of agriculture--the rhetoric sometimes out-distances the the reality of the arguments made and fears generated.

In the case of E. coli in beef, there is nothing that cattlemen can or cannot do that will materially affect the probability of E. coli showing up in your hamburger. There is some evidence that taking cattle off the feedlot for a period of time and putting them on pasture prior to slaughter reduces the level but does not eliminate the presence of E. coli and therefore its potential for contamination. So there is no reason for the FDA to use valuable resources to visit cattle ranches or feeding operations as part of  "beefing-up" prevention of E. coli contamination from beef.

Since what happens on ranches and feedlots has no effect on whether beef ultimately becomes contaminated with E. coli, traceback to production agriculture--that is, an animal identification system--is not needed to protect consumers from E. coli.

That is not to say that an animal ID program is, or is not, appropriate for other reasons. Recent arguments for animal traceback are primarily concerned with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease). While that may be an important issue, it is unrelated to the E. coli discussion.

Traceback is required, of course, but it is MEAT traceback that is needed, not animal traceback.

Meat traceback is needed because E. coli O157:H7 grows in the gut of beef animals, the food safety issue concerns the prevention of the contamination of slaughtered meat from sources like intestines and hides.

When E. coli O157:H7 is found in ground beef or on beef muscle meat surfaces, the problem is one that originates at the packing plant. Since the institution of the HACCP system in meat inspection, the USDA has focused its enforcement at downline facilities that process boxed beef into hamburger and resisted tracing the contamination back to the packing plant that produced the boxed beef.

The USDA has done this despite the knowledge that a processing facility that does no slaughtering lacks a source of E. coli O157:H7. The most likely source of the E. coli is on the surface of meat that came in from the slaughterhouse, thus the need for meat traceback.

The rhetoric of those speaking for meat packers and processors tend to steer attention away from the central issue. James Hodges of the American Meat Institute Foundation makes statements like "No outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 have been linked to whole muscle cuts like steaks and roasts." Similarly, the North American Meat Processors Association (NAMP) sent out a 2008 NewsFax release saying "NAMP knows of no illness that has resulted from the consumption of intact beef product."

The issue is not the consumption of steaks, roasts, and intact beef product. Everyone acknowledges that heating the outside of those products to 160 degrees kills E. coli 0157:H7. Rather the problem comes from the fact that the presence of E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals is not considered an adulterant. That presence raises the opportunity for cross contamination with other foods or the incorporation of E. coli present on the surface of intact cuts into ground beef.

Cutting through the rhetoric, it seems clear that the USDA can significantly reduce the number of E. coli illnesses by declaring E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals to be a contaminant that must be eliminated as part of the slaughtering process and by instituting a meat traceback system that will trace contaminated ground beef back to the packing plant that provided it.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT's Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). Daryll Ray's column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

agpolicy.org

NAIS ~~ over estimated, over promised, over budget, unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted.

Brad Headtel

The NAIS is a years-old concept that has outlived its time and fails to recognize that economic instability is our greatest national hazard, not, if all the animals have a government number.

Mary--Fireworks Farm, CA.

NAIS is not a direct ban on meat or chicken or goat meat or ... but a slow, complex legal threat entailing loss of more and more control and then of isolated bankruptcy or of just giving up farming or ranching completely.

Linn Cohen-Cole, 2008

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State
(Source: New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973)

Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brad Headtel-------On Bruce (USDA) Knight's pandemic projections
of national livestock catastrophic die-offs.

Bureaucracy never sleeps.

Neil Young

Makes ranchers paw the dirt----like a bull looking forward to the virtues of castration.

on NAIS-------Brad Headtel

Only Jesus loves the stupid. As He looks closer toward the DC Beltway------it's an ever increasing stretch.

Brad Headtel

You are known by the low morals of the bureaucrats you tolerate.

Brad Headtel

Phony science begets phony public policy.

Walter Williams

NAIS~~~~ Mother of all unnecessary federal job creation schemes.

Brad Headtel

The issue is not the issue. Who decides the issue is the issue. If you decide the issue you are a free man. If a politician decides the issue you can un-elect him, but if a bureaucrat decides the issues you are his pawn and practically without recourse.

Harold Hockstatter

It is sad that here in the United States of America we must fight our government to protect our own rights, but fight I will.

 Jerry Fennell--From "Shattered Dreams"

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

On NAIS -- H.L. Mencken

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it..

Adolf Hitler

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert Heinlein

If a government program is not worth doing at all,   it is not worth doing well.

...on NAIS - Brad Headtel

Communism ~~ the government owns the means and method of production.  In fascism the government controls the means and method of production.

We're not happy until you're not happy...

USDA official on the Westland/Hallmark Meat recall of Feb. 17, 08

NAIS is one of those issues that everyone wishes never became an issue. It is a genie that will not go back in the bottle.

Troy Marshall, Seed Stock Digest, 1/7/08

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

on the NAIS program..... - Frederick Douglass

We're out here branding cattle, worrying about our best horse going blind, when all of a sudden the USDA is working at mach speed filling our saddle bags with heavy NAIS rocks.

Michelle Reid

....NAIS matters less than flea sweat.
....producer interest in NAIS is less robust than a paper pig in a barbeque pit.

Wes Ishmael, Contributing editor,
BEEF Magazine, Dec. 2007

I work day and night to prevent NAIS!

This is the first time in my life I have had the opportunity to save billions of dollars of wasted government tax for my fellow livestock producers all over the nation. As it was said about Queen Esther of old, from the great palace of Shushan, '...who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.?'

I feel the NAIS program, as planned, will embezzle from 10 to 60% of the profit from every livestock producer, and that is not an acceptable price to pay for a naive USDA concern about future unknown or previously eradicated diseases.
Every consumer or livestock owner should spend full time to prevent the enforcement of this cost to our nation.

Darol Dickinson

NAIS will not be mandatory under my tenure. I repeat will not!

Mike Johanns on mandatory National Animal Identification Surrender.
Sec. of Agriculture Mike Johanns quit the job two months later.

NAIS will put Livestock owners under closer surveillance than terrorists, illegals aliens, drug dealers, and convicted sex offenders/child molesters. Currently, only convicted sex offenders/child molesters have to register their premises.

BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy takes five to seven years to develop. It's not actually a disease that you have to rush to trace. You can take about all the time you need. What you want to do is prevent it in the first place.

Reno, Nev. --- 11/29/07 Jay Truitt          
NCBA VP for governmental affairs,
on the USDA proposed 48 hour
emergency disease trace back.

Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gunna happen.

Will Rogers . . . . on NAIS

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed bureaucrats.

Edward Langley

Each time we give up information about ourselves to the government, we give up some of our freedom. The more the government or any institution knows about us, the more power it has over us. When the government knows all of our private information, we stand naked before official power; stripped of our privacy, we lose our rights and privileges. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.

Senator Sam Ervin, June 1974.

The USDA is a run away agency out of control, with total disregard for U.S. citizens, yet full regard for other countries and free trade at all costs.

Dr. Max Thornsberry, President R-CALF USA

NAIS . . . a program that somewhat resembles an expensive plan to use baseball bats to kill mosquitoes . . . when we haven't found the mosquito---and the plan was proposed by a bat manufacturer.

NAIS . . . when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a fake front for the urge to rule.

H.L. Menchen

Is the USDA run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it?

NAIS is like a fat man in a swim suit - you may not appreciate what you see, but what isn't revealed is even more fearful.

NAIS Employee -- Never argue with a person whose job depends on not being convinced.

Remember - A major animal disease outbreak to a State Veterinarian is like a multi-car wreck to an auto body shop.

NAIS is the very model of how an unresponsive Executive Branch agency can cooperate with a globalist industrial agriculture and a technocratic corporate elite to force an undesired program upon an unwilling populace.

Mary Zanoni

NAIS press releases from USDA could present caviar in such a light we want to run from it like a falling meteorite.

Many associations embrace the NAIS because their paid leadership does so, regardless of what their members truly want.

Marida Favia delCore Borromeo

On NAIS - If USDA comes up with a stupid idea -- If Congress votes to fund it -- If 296,000,000 taxpayers write the check -- I'm sorry, it's still a stupid idea.

NAIS is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

NAIS is the result of looking for trouble, not finding it anywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying costly incorrect remedies.

As the government is doing wrong to us, like with NAIS, you gotta know they are doing wrong to people all over the world, right?  Why do all these countries hate the USA?

Linn Cohen-Cole

Once government gets its hands on new power, it is never relinquished.

Henry  Lamb ~~~ Sovereignty International