January 3, 2004 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution by Elizabeth Lee

The U.S. Department of Agriculture on Tuesday announced new rules that will require processors to test the cheap, meaty filler that goes into these products and confirm that it's free of spinal cord and central nervous system tissues. But those standards may be hard to meet.

In the decade since meatpackers began using a high-pressure technology to strip bits of meat from the spinal column, the industry has repeatedly failed to meet looser standards aimed at keeping the tissue out of the food supply, critics say.

"The USDA is saying we're going to have stricter standards, but we'll leave it up to industry to self-police themselves," said Michael Hansen, senior research associate for Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine. "The agency's own testing has shown the industries couldn't meet the standard in the first place. So why do they think putting them on the honor system is going to work?"

A USDA survey in 2002 showed that meat processed using advanced recovery systems contained spinal cord tissue at 74 percent of processing plants. A follow-up study of plants not in compliance with the USDA standards indicated that 35 percent were still turning out meat containing spinal tissue.

Meatpackers started using the high-pressure process in 1995, to reduce labor costs and recover more lean muscle meat. Spinal cords are supposed to be removed before processing, but sometimes a portion remains.

Consumer advocates contend that the final product contains bone marrow and spinal cord, and USDA tests turned up similar findings in 1996. The agency proposed tougher rules in 1998, but in the face of industry opposition, the new standards weren't finalized until this week.

"There was likely some very low level of exposure to the tissues, but there's no evidence that we've had BSE [bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease] in this country," said Gary Weber, executive director of regulatory affairs for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

Consumer advocates and some public health officials say the new rules don't go far enough. The USDA's food safety agency initially proposed more stringent controls. Some consumer advocates believe the high-pressure meat-recovery method should be banned entirely.

In 2001, a Harvard University study of BSE identified advanced meat recovery systems as one of the more likely pathways for infected tissues to get into the food supply. It estimated that removing material such as spinal cords, brains and vertebral matter from the food supply would reduce potential human exposure to the disease by 95 percent.

Scientists don't know how much infectious material a person must consume before developing Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a variant of mad cow. The fatal brain disease is believed to be caused by consuming meat from infected cows --- meat that likely contains nervous system tissue.

"Mechanically recovered meat was certainly . . . the vehicle of infection to humans," said Paul Brown, a National Institutes of Health expert on mad cow disease. "That's if you have an infected cow. If there are no infected cows in the U.S., and there may not be anymore, it doesn't matter what you eat."

Consumers have no way of knowing whether a food product contains beef produced using advanced meat recovery systems. The meat is labeled "beef" or "beef trimmings," the same as meat produced in more traditional ways. The product may turn up in lean ground beef not labeled as a specific muscle cut, such as ground chuck, as well as in frozen dinners. Some restaurants, including McDonald's, refuse to use beef processed by the high-pressure technique.

Until this week, finding spinal cord in the final product was treated as a labeling issue rather than a matter of public health. Companies could voluntarily recall the meat and relabel it as a beef product that might contain bits of bone matter, or render it for animal feed or other uses.

About 60 percent to 70 percent of cattle were processed with advanced meat recovery systems in 1999, the latest year for which statistics are available. Meat industry and USDA officials say increased scrutiny has caused some slaughterhouses to abandon the method.

"The industry is capable of producing complying product, but it requires more effort," said Daniel Engeljohn of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. "It's a business decision how much effort they want to put into it."

Under the new rules, the USDA will do checks based on a company's history, he said.

Additional regulations that ban other central nervous system tissues may make it so difficult for processors to meet standards that they abandon the method, said Randy Huffman, vice president of scientific affairs for the American Meat Institute Foundation, which conducts research for the meat industry.

The industry has provided guidelines to meatpacking plants on improving processing methods, Huffman said, but keeping all traces of spinal cord out of the product is difficult. Government tests detect minute amounts.

Since the USDA started monthly tests in March, it has seen a steady decrease in spinal cord tissue, Engeljohn said. He could not provide recent statistics.

"Industry has an obligation to produce safe products," the USDA official said. "We have a highly effective system in place to ensure the food supply is safe. There are always going to be places where there are failures in the system."