The Game Changer
In an earlier article entitled "History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job, I described how the bout of regulatory reform that mandated all federal - and state - inspected meat and poultry companies to create and maintain HACCP plans was a politically-based policy masquerading as a science-based measure. Its real achievements were to drive small meat processors out of business, increase market consolidation, and privatize the meat inspection process for large transnational corporations.[8]
These radical changes to the meat and poultry inspection process were spearheaded by none other than Michael Taylor, someone -- it could be argued -- who has done practically more than anyone to pervert regulatory law and legally permit the poisoning of our food supply. This is the same Michael Taylor who represented Monsanto while a lawyer at King & Spaulding, a law firm that attends to the wishes of the top Pharma, Chemical, Agribusiness and Biotech multinational corporations. The same Michael Taylor who had spent nearly a decade working to weaken the Delaney clause, a very good law designed to protect public health by prohibiting cancer-causing chemicals from being added to foods. The same Michael Taylor who had just finished implementing at the FDA the psuedo-scientific policy of "substantial equivalence" so that Monsanto's patented genetically engineered bovine growth hormone could be unleashed on the market without undergoing any pesky safety tests proving it would not cause harm to human health or the environment -- no matter that it sickens cattle and has been linked to human breast, prostrate and colon cancers.[9] And, it's the same Michael Taylor who subsequently went to work for Monsanto as its Vice President of Public Policy where he worked on long-term strategic planning. And now, the same Michael Taylor is the guy the Obama Administration has installed at the FDA to "fix" our food safety problems, no doubt here to put all that long-term planning into action.
Ironically, Taylor's career has been a boon for the organic food industry, which has grown steadily as the public turns away from industrial food products loaded with dangerous pesticides, GMOs, additives, aspartame, preservatives and flavor enhancers.
So what does Michael Taylor want to do to "fix" our food safety problems? He wants to mandate HACCP plans for raw food in/raw food out produce processing, exactly what Dr. Sperber says, sensibly, can't be done effectively.
In the 106 pages of documents and correspondence accompanying Moss's article, we read repeatedly about how Cargill did not follow the HACCP plan it created, which should lead us to question if our post-HACCP meat supply deserves the USDA's seal of approval. Since Taylor's MegaRegs took effect, the meat and poultry industry is a place in which large processors like Cargill police themselves with minimal, if any, interference from the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. In fact, if we look, we find that the USDA even helps large processors cover up cases of gross contamination.
The Case of John Munsell and Montana Quality Foods
A compelling investigative report called
"Shielding the Giant: USDA's ˜Don't Look, Don't Know' Policy for Beef
Inspection by Tom Levine, the Legal Director at the Governmental
Accountability Project, provides overwhelming evidence that USDA officials work
to protect the business interests over the interests of public safety.[10]
John Munsell, a small businessman and owner of Montana Quality Foods, discovered that meat sold by ConAgra's Greeley, Colorado, plant to his Miles City, Montana, processing plant was contaminated with E. coli O157:H7. When Munsell tried to report the problem to the USDA, officials not only covered up the evidence, they engaged in retaliation against Munsell, eventually forcing him out of business, all to protect ConAgra and USDA's role in allowing contaminated meat product into the marketplace.[11]
Had the New York Times' Michael Moss looked at the history of this USDA/ConAgra cover-up, he would have found information that explained why Taylor's brand of HACCP makes it inevitable that E. coli-contaminated hamburger will eventually make its way to the public, and why Stephanie Smith will not likely be the last person disabled by her dinner.
The Government Accountability Project's investigative findings included evidence that the public was being exposed to E. coli O157:H7 for two years before the 2002 ConAgra recall finally happened, an event triggered because John Munsell was courageous enough to blow the whistle on them, despite enormous personal cost. According to the report, "Starting in late summer 2000, FSIS repeatedly discovered that ConAgra had been receiving products returned from customers as E. coli O157:H7 positive. Each time, the agency allowed the tainted beef to be cooked and reentered into commerce, without warning the public or imposing systematic corrective action."
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