U.S. MEAT, POULTRY INSPECTION CALLED FAULTY The U.S. meat and poultry inspection programs are incapable of protecting consumers from contaminated products, groups representing inspectors and consumers charged. "The whole trend of inspection for the last 10 years has been to corrupt and to degrade the system where today the public is at constant risk to contaminated and adulterated meat," Kenneth Blaylock, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told a House Agriculture subcommittee. "The American consumer has little reason to feel confident about the safety of meat and poultry being offered to him today," said Rodney Leonard, executive director of the Community Nutrition Institute. "Company management is less concerned about the risk to health than about raising plant output and company profits," Leonard told a hearing of the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry. Kenneth Morrison, staff associate at the Government Accountability Project, said inspectors consistently disclose violations of federal law, demonstrating a "serious breakdown in the entire inspection system." Morrison told of chicken fat for flavoring being contaminated by "intestines dragging in a water trough used to flush away the condemned product, fecal material, human spit, chewing gum and paper towels used by plant employees to blow their noses." Donald Houston, administrator of the U.S. Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, FSIS, defended the government's program, calling it "one of the most respected public health programs in the world." FSIS inspects an estimated 127 mln head of cattle and 4.5 billion chicken and turkeys every year. Houston said inspection programs have kept pace with change, but conceded that the danger of chemical residues in the meat and poultry supply has increased. He also said that, although he was confident the bacterium salmonella eventually could be eradicated, it would take time and much money to contain the growing problem. Salmonella, which in extreme cases can cause death, is found in approximately 37 pct of U.S. broilers, 12 pct of raw pork and three to five pct of raw beef, Houston said. The number of reported cases has doubled over the past 20 years, he said, to 40,000 cases annually. "We certainly really have not found an effective means of turning this disease around," said Rep. James Olin (D-Va.) The National Research Council recommended in 1985 that FSIS intensify efforts to develop rapid diagnostic procedures for detecting microoganisms. But the meat and poultry industries have said such controls would cost too much. "Hopefully we will not overreact by installing unnecessarily complicated procedures that may become obstacles to the real goal of providing an increasingly safer, more nutritious and economical meat supply for consumers," Stanley Emerling, executive vice president of the National Association of Meat Purveyors, said. Blaylock, speaking on behalf of food inspectors, said a new program allowing elimination of USDA inspection functions at certain plants "voids the law in letter and spirit, and must be repealed or we will see rising consumer fraud and an epidemic of death and illness for which there will be no prevention nor legal recourse." Subcommittee Chairman Charles Stenholm (D-Tex.) said the panel would hold a hearing on salmonella June 2.