....© 2000, Kimit A. Muston
I was beginning to think silliness might be dying out in this country when I came across a little news item from the Associated Press which convinced me I should stop worrying, at least about Texas. It seems that in November of 1999 the United States Department of Agriculture grew concerned about a company called Supreme Beef Processors, Inc., down in Dallas. Now, Supreme Beef is big. They are the 25th. largest meat processor in the nation. They sell almost 500,000 tons of beef to the government every day, most of which is then supplied by the U.S.D.A. to schools for their lunch programs. And so the U.S.D.A got a little excited when beef from Supreme turned up with salmonella in excess of federal limits three separate times in a five month period.Salmonella is a nasty little bug. About 500 people die from salmonella infections every year, and it gives another 2 - 4 million people a week's worth of cramps, fever, and diarrhea, some of them bad enough to be hospitalized. The uncertainity about the numbers is because the bug takes between 12 to 48 hours to make you sick, and a mild case is often mistaken for the flu. Antibiotics are of no help against salmonella so the best defence is to avoid getting infected in the first place. A few people pick up the bug from their pet reptiles (turtles, snakes and iguanas), but most folks get it from uncooked or undercooked poultry, eggs or beef, either directly by eating the product or indirectly by just having infected meat in their kitchens.
As serious as this sounds, the U.S.D.A. wasn't worried just about salmonella, but they were using it as an indicator. Their thinking was that if salmonella was in the hamburger coming out of Supreme Beef then there must be a lot of other, even more dangerous bugs present as well. So on November 30th. 1999 they stopped buying beef from Supreme and in December pulled their inspectors from the plant, effectively shutting Supreme Beef down since you can't ship meat across state lines unless it has been U.S.D.A. inspected and approved.
Now the way I figure it, at this point Supreme Beef had three choices. They could spend a few thousand dollars to clean up their plant. Or they could declare bankruptcy. Or they could try bribery. But to my surprise, Supreme Beef chose a fourth course of action; they sued. Usually it's cheaper to hire a dozen or so people for life to spray disenfectant on everything than to hire a law firm for a week. But for Mr. Steven F. Spiritas, the C.E.O. of Supreme Beef, (his family has owned the company for the last 30 years) this was a matter of principle. Supreme's argument in Federal court was that the U.S.D.A. regulations on salmonella were unfair. Sure, it can kill you. But James Mulhern, a spokesman for Supreme, insisted that the presence of salmonella was not an indicator of unsanitary plant conditions.
Besides, Mr. Mulhern argued, if the tainted meat is cooked long enough and hot enough the little bugs are killed. And that seemed reaonsable to me. If the lunchroom ladies in American schools remember to wash their hands after touching uncooked meat, and disinfect everything that they or the meat touched, (cutting boards, sinks, counters, knives, forks, towels, aprons, gloves, etc., etc. ) then the little bugs won't get spread to other foods, like lettuce or jello. In short, if everybody in America would just keep their kitchens as clean as, say, an operating room, this entire salmonella mess would just go away! That's a good safety suggestion but not one, I think, likely to increase sales of beef.
Heck, according to Mr. Spiritas, the real problem is those darn pesky cows. They've all got salmonella in their intestines and he wants the U.S.D.A. to talk to the ranchers about it and leave him alone. It almost sounds as if Mr. Spiritas suspects some kind of secret bovine cabal plotting to destroy his business. I'm not sure the American Beef Council would want to use his ideas about cows in any of their television ads. I don't think it would have a very positive effect on beef sales, either.
Besides, I always thought the entire point of meat processing was to prevent ANY of the numerous and varied flora and fauna always found in the intestines of animals from coming into contact with the meat. But according to Mr. Spiritas, I'm wrong. Anyway, the case made by Supreme Beef seemed pretty silly to me but there was a U.S. district judge down in Dallas who thought it was pretty good.
His name is the honorable A. Joe Fish, and on December the 10th., after listening to arguments for 6 hours, he noted in Supreme's defence that, "We have to consider the fact that there has been no outbreak of salmonella poisoning." I wonder if the next time A. Joe is flying he would mind if the pilot turned off the radar, since the plane hadn't crashed yet! And while A. Joe noted that "No one thinks that salmonella in meat is a good thing," he then orderd the federal inspectors back into Supreme Beef's plant pending a full trial. Just what the inspectors were supposed to inspect for was not clear, since A. Joe hinted strongly that he doesn't think the U.S.D.A. has the power to regulate the presence of salmonella in meat, which is yet another argument that isn't going to help beef sales.
Ten days later Supreme was forced to recalled 180,000 pounds of meat from Wal-mart's and Albertson's in seven states after it tested postivie for E. coli bacteria. It was the very first time Surpreme had ever had to recall product and Mr. Spiritas wondered if there might not be some connection with his companys' lawsuit. There may be. It is certainly not beyond reason to picture a vindictive government inspector playing a little payback. But that is yet one more argument that does not inspire people to hunger for a nice juicy steak.
Then Supreme Beef got a valentine from the U.S.D.A. On February 14th, 2000 the agriculture deparment announced that Supreme now met the pathogen-control standards to prevent salmonella growth and they would again start buying beef from Surpreme for school lunch programs. The crises, it would appear, had passed.
But Mr. Spiritas is not willing to kiss and make up. Supreme is not dropping its lawsuit. Said Mr. Spiritas, "We challenged the salmonella standard in part because it is arbitrary, unscientific and has nothing to do with the saftey of the meat we produce." He could be right. The government could be dead wrong about the salmonella standards. Mr. Spiritas also said, "It has been an unfortunate and expensive road we've had to take."
It gets more expensive as each day goes by. The case is supposed to go to trial in May. It is going to draw some publicity. Perhaps in the meantime someone will explain the term "Pyrrhic victory" to Mr. Spiritas because after you sweep aside all the arguements about testing methods and results and meanings and big brother government, what he's suing for is the right to sell tainted beef. He says tainted can still be safe, and maybe it can. I am not an expert in pathogens and infections. But neither are most parents whose kids would be eating Supreme Beef patties in their lunch rooms. Given the choice between hamburger with salmonella and hamburger without, which one would you choose? Maybe the worst thing that could happen to Supreme would be to win their lawsuit.
No matter what the honorable A. Joe Fish says, it seems to me that sillyness is alive and well in the sate of Texas. But then, how could I have ever doubted it.