Meat Safety: Inspectors' Ability to Detect Harmful Bacteria Is Limited
(Testimony, 05/24/94, GAO/T-RCED-94-228).

The federal meat inspection is only marginally better at protecting the
public from harmful bacteria than it was a year ago when several people
died after eating hamburgers contaminated with E. coli bacteria.  The
U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) continues to rely on visual
inspections that cannot detect such pathogens--the greatest public
health threat associated with meat and poultry. USDA's efforts to
improve its inspection system have skirted this inherent weakness, and
USDA has not tried to require routine microbial testing by industry and
government.  In fiscal years 1993 and 1994, USDA budgeted about $45
million to launch 81 projects to improve its current inspection system,
such as (1) mandating package labels describing how to handle and cook
meat and poultry safely, (2) undertaking more than two dozen data
collection and research projects, and (3) strengthening oversight of
meat and poultry plants with a high-risk profile.  These efforts have
probably lowered the chance that people will get sick from eating
contaminated meat.  Consumers and restaurants are now more aware that
raw meat must be properly handled and cooked to kill bacteria. Also,
USDA's more vigorous enforcement of the current sanitation and slaughter
processing regulations will indirectly help control bacterial
contamination by eliminating some potential sources of contamination.
However, USDA still needs to adopt a modern, scientific, risk-based
inspection system that would allow the agency to target inspections to
higher-risk meat and poultry products and to develop methods to help
inspectors detect microbial contamination.

--------------------------- Indexing Terms -----------------------------

 REPORTNUM:  T-RCED-94-228
     TITLE:  Meat Safety: Inspectors' Ability to Detect Harmful Bacteria 
             Is Limited
      DATE:  05/24/94
   SUBJECT:  Meat inspection
             Safety regulation
             Poultry inspection
             Contaminated foods
             Safety standards
             Meat packing industry
             Consumer protection
             Food inspection
             Food supply
             Testing
IDENTIFIER:  FSIS Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point System
             
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