Beef plants revise safety measures.

Hundreds of U.S. beef processors, facing a new government survey last year for in-plant meat safety measures, added some type of improvement to their operations, U.S. government officials told Dow Jones Newswires. Of the more than 1,000 beef processing plants surveyed last year by USDA to make sure safety measures were in place to keep deadly E. coli bacteria out of the food system, about half decided to make changes, said government officials. The officials asked not to be named because the final assessment report on the survey has not yet been completed.

The survey also showed that a 2002 USDA initiative to get meat processors to overhaul plant safety guidelines was mostly successful. Results of the assessment are still "preliminary" and "further analysis" needs to be completed, but a final report is expected to be released sometime soon, officials said.

According to the news service, USDA told U.S. meat processors in 2002 that they needed to overhaul their safety measures for E. coli, but up until now the government did not have an accurate picture of just how many actually did comply. The survey last year put an end to that mystery and the results are good, USDA officials said.

In related news, Consumers are beginning to question the safety of U.S. meat, reveals a survey carried out by MeatingPlace.com. Despite the majority of consumers remaining confident of the overall safety of the meat supply, 34 percent said they are less confident than they were five years ago.

One of the main drivers of this trend has been the intense media coverage of meat recalls, which has unleashed "an overall mistrust of food safety in America," said professor of communications studies at Northwestern University, Irving Rein. Only 35 percent of consumers interviewed agree that the U.S. government is doing everything it can to guarantee meat product safety.