USDA Proposes to Reverse School Ground Beef Rules

The Bush administration has proposed reversing a federal policy that required all ground beef used in government school lunch programs to be tested to ensure that it is free of salmonella, officials said yesterday.

The Agriculture Department is moving to change the Clinton administration policy after concluding that less costly alternatives for protecting meat safety could be as effective. Officials also said the "zero tolerance" standard for salmonella in school lunch meals was not scientifically justified.

The possible change was hailed by the meat industry, which opposed the standard when it was implemented last summer and lobbied the new Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman to reverse it.

"For a variety of reasons, the new specifications had no basis in public health," said Sara Lilygren, a spokeswoman for the American Meat Institute. Zero tolerance for salmonella is unnecessary because the bacteria is killed in normal cooking, she said.

But the decision was criticized by consumer groups and some legislators, who noted that the tougher standard had resulted in the rejection of almost 5 million pounds of ground beef during this school year, almost 5 percent of the total purchased by the USDA.

"This program is working, so why not continue it?" said Carol Tucker Foreman of the Consumer Federation of America, who called the proposal "a very significant rollback. Do we really want to take chances with that much contaminated meat being served to our children at lunch?"

More than 26 million children participate in the school lunch program. The USDA has purchased 111 million pounds of ground beef for the program since last July, when the tougher new rules went into effect. Critics of the testing said that it raised the cost of ground beef and sometimes made approved meat unavailable to schools.

Salmonella poisoning in a variety of foods causes 1.4 million illnesses -- generally diarrhea and intestinal distress -- and 600 deaths a year in the United States, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. But contaminated beef is less likely to cause poisoning than chicken.

The rules governing what kind of testing is done on meat used in school lunch programs are written into contracts the Agriculture Department signs with suppliers.

Instead of requiring testing for salmonella, the Bush administration would require other methods of ensuring meat safety in the school lunch program, officials said. The alternatives would focus on improving control of all types of contamination during slaughtering and in processing plants rather than testing at the end of the process, said Kenneth Clayton, acting administrator of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. He also said that irradiation could be used more to kill bacteria.

While Clayton said that the salmonella testing wasn't necessary, the new proposal calls for continued monitoring for a particularly dangerous form of E. coli bacterium.

Clayton denied the decision was prompted by pressure from the meat industry.

"Everyone knew last year that these standards were interim, and the plan was always to review them," said Clayton, who said final standards would be needed by July. "We want input from people involved in the process."

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) attacked the decision as part of a pattern of Bush administration rollbacks in health and environmental regulation.

"First, it's arsenic in water. Now it's salmonella in school lunches. Where will this end?" he said.

Advocates for the tougher salmonella standards argued last summer that fast-food restaurants had higher standards to protect against the bacteria than the school lunch programs, and then-Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman agreed.

"Our principle was that kids in school lunch programs should be eating meat at least on a par with fast-food outlets," Glickman said yesterday. "We knew there were trade-offs and that it might raise the price, but I would say today that it was the right decision."

A March 21 letter to Veneman, signed by meat industry groups as well as the American School Food Service Association, complained that the new standards were counterproductive.

"The new specifications have created problems for each and every sector involved in supplying schools with safe, wholesome beef products, and caused a decline in ground meat purchases for the school lunch program," the letter said. "We recommend that USDA work closely with industry in developing a rational, science-based set of guidelines, rather than the multiple standards that exist today."