Article in today's Chicago Suntimes:

Meat policy causing a beef
July 15, 2000
BY LANCE GAY SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE
WASHINGTON--The federal agency overseeing food inspection is imposing
new rules reclassifying as safe for human consumption animal
carcasses with cancers, tumors and open sores.

Federal meat inspectors and consumer groups are protesting the
decision to classify tumors and open sores as aesthetic problems,
which permits the meat to get the government's purple seal of
approval as a wholesome food product.

The Agriculture Department began implementing the new policy as part
of a pilot project in 24 slaughterhouses last October and plans to
expand the system nationwide covering poultry, beef and pork. The
agency this month extended until Aug. 29 the time for the public to
comment on the regulations and won't issue final rules until after
the comments are received.

In 1998, the inspections and safety system reclassified an array of
animal diseases as being "defects that rarely or never present a
direct public health risk" and said "unaffected carcass portions"
could be passed on to consumers by cutting out lesions.

Among animal diseases the agency said don't present a health danger
are:

* Cancer.

* A pneumonia of poultry called airsacculitis.

* Glandular swellings or lymphomas.

* Sores.

* Infectious arthritis.

* Diseases caused by intestinal worms.

In the case of tumors, the guidelines state: "remove localized lesion
(s) and pass unaffected carcass portions."

"They just cut off the areas," said Carol Blake, spokeswoman for the
Agriculture Department's inspection and safety system.

"Most Americans don't want to eat this sort of contamination," said
Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy
Project.

Delmer Jones, a federal food inspector for 41 years who lives in
Remlap, Ala., said he's so revolted by the lowering of food
wholesomeness standards that he doesn't buy meat at the supermarket
anymore because he doesn't trust that it is safe to eat.

"I eat very little to no meat but sardines and fish," said Jones,
president of the National Joint Council of Meat Inspection Locals, a
union of 7,000 meat inspectors nationwide affiliated with the
American Federation of Government Employees. He said he's trying to
get his wife to stop eating meat. "I've told her what she's eating."