EX-USDA OFFICIAL URGES CHICKEN HANDLING LABELS A former U.S. Agriculture Department official urged the department to require that packages of chicken be labeled with handling and cooking instructions to protect the public from disease. Carol Tucker Foreman, President of Foreman and Heidepriem and a former assistant secretary of agriculture for food and consumer services, told a House Agriculture subcommittee, "every hour of every day, 22 Americans become victims of chicken contaminated with salmonella." She said every two and a half weeks, an American dies of salmonellosis or complications arising from it and the incidence of poisoning from poultry has increased steadily over the past several years. Foreman said USDA should follow a National Academy of Sciences recommendation to label chicken packages to remind consumers of preparation procedures necessary to avoid illness. She urged USDA to require that birds be washed thoroughly before they are defeathered and that defeathering machines be cleaned several times a day, that birds be condemned if their intestines are punctured or there is visible fecal contamination and that chiller water be changed more often. Kenneth Blaylock, President of the American Federation of Government Employees, said a poultry industry recommendation to move away from the current bird-by-bird inspection could prove "disastrous." He said a strengthened bird-by-bird inspection with slower line speeds was the foundation upon which new inspection techniques should be overlaid.