Latest meat industry recall may impact new farm bill debate.

The recent recall of nearly 22 million pounds of hamburger appears to be impacting debate on the new farm bill, so much so that the Senate, whenever it acts on its version of the omnibus farm bill, will likely delete a provision in the House-passed measure that would allow state-inspected meat to be shipped to other states.

House Ag Committee Chairman Collin Peterson (D-Minn.) was instrumental in including farm bill language allowing state-inspected meat being shipped to other states. During recent remarks on the matter, Peterson said the lack of such action was negatively impacting organic meat producers. "I'll be damned if we're going to allow foreign meat to come into the country and let it be shipped all over" while state-inspected meat cannot be shipped from one state to another, Peterson said.

Senate Ag Committee Chairman Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), does not appear to be a proponent of the House farm bill position on state meat inspections. In a written response to questions about the change, Harkin said, "It's important to help small and very small plants ship in interstate commerce. However, simply changing the existing law is very complex and will require careful consideration of food safety, additional federal oversight of the state systems and will complicate trade." In the Senate, Republican Orrin Hatch of Utah and Democrat Herb Kohl of Wisconsin already have introduced separate bills to allow processors to sell state-inspected meat across state lines.

Consumer advocates and a federal meat inspectors union oppose the measure, which is now under consideration in the Senate. They say that state inspection standards vary widely and that the federal inspection requirement ensures food safety. "We know from direct experience that federal and state inspection systems are not the same," said Michael Wilson, director of legislative and political action for the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. "We need a grade-A inspection system. The USDA system is not perfect, but it's the only model we have."

The National Association of State Departments of Agriculture has long lobbied for the change; if it happens, some estimates note that as many as 80% of the nation's 5,600 meatpackers will opt out of the Agriculture Department inspection system.

While the Bush administration has not taken a position on interstate shipment of state-inspected meat, USDA Acting Secretary Chuck Conner addressed this last week. Conner said: "I will tell you the same thing that I told the House Agriculture Committee during the [farm bill] markup process. The administration actually does not have a position directly on the state-inspected meat issue. Having said that though, I told the [Agriculture] Committee that USDA and our federal inspection team had conducted an audit of all of the state-inspected meat facilities in terms of determining whether or not their standards were equivalent to or greater than the federal standards, if they were federally inspected facilities. And I believe all but one state came back with a clean bill of health, saying that they either met federal standards or exceeded federal standards with their own state inspected meat facility. And so that was the feedback I gave them, and the House, as you have already indicated, chose to adopt that provision which would allow state-inspected facilities to ship product intrastate."

However, during House consideration of the state inspection legislation, USDA urged the Agriculture Committee to consider the problems states would have in tracing and recovering adulterated product but the House bowed to lobbying efforts by state departments of agriculture who seek to expand their powers. Some states do not have meat inspection laws; several rely on USDA inspectors for that service. Under the proposed House farm bill change, those states would have to establish their own inspection programs. While other states have their own meat inspection programs, they would have to apply federal standards if the farm bill proposal passes.