February 11, 2004  Bismarck Tribune (North Dakota) by BETTY MILLS

But what if it's food? For instance, in 2002, a Pennsylvania company recalled 27 million pounds of potentially contaminated lunch meat. By the time the word went out, much of it had been eaten, including that which went to school-lunch programs nationwide, and 43 people died from a bacterial infection by name of listeria.

Listeria is pretty much preventable, if proper precautions are taken by the companies in the processing of the meat and poultry they sell. You knew there'd be a catch, didn't you? Who inspects? Who enforces? Who knows?

The good news is that we can all prevent becoming listeria victims. The U.S. Department of Agriculture Meat and Poultry Hotline has a whole list of precautions. They include: "Reheat until steaming hot the following types of ready-to-eat foods: hot dogs, luncheon meats, cold cuts, fermented and dried sausage and other deli-style meat and poultry products. If you cannot reheat these foods, do not eat them."

Follow that up with washing your hands in hot soapy water for at least 20 seconds, along with any utensils, dishes or cutting boards involved. The department also warns us not to eat soft cheese, such as feta, brie, camembert, blue-veined or Mexican style cheese. And doesn't that just say farewell to many a favorite lunch menu and party nibbler, not to mention those handy deli stops when you're running late?

Meanwhile, back at the USDA shop -- which, at least theoretically, carries out regular inspections of food-processing plants -- under what banner does it currently fly? Is it taking care of us poor peasants who eat the maybe-infected stuff, or the companies that sell it?

According to Dr. Stohr, a veterinarian and influenza expert with the World Health Organization, "In the quest for profits in the animal industry, human public health often comes second."

When there was an outbreak of Listeria in the mid-1990s, it got the attention of the Clinton administration, which set about creating new regulations to prevent future problems, regulations that would very likely have prevented this recent outbreak.

Unfortunately, they had not cleared the Federal Register, a final step, when the current administration -- with its across-the-board policy of reversing anything the Clinton administration had done that it could gets its delete button on -- took over, and the new regs were summarily dispatched. Maybe those 43 people would have died anyway.

In the case of the Pennsylvania company with the 27-million-pound problem, federal inspectors had drawn up repeated lists of sanitary violations at the plant, which were ignored or not acted on until it was too late. The company had even found listeria bacteria in it own testing but had not bothered to tell the inspectors.

The response of the USDA deputy in charge of public safety was that it showed testing doesn't work. And, when someone drowns, does that prove that swimming lessons don't work?

Equally frightening is a report by the Government Accountability Project, GAP, an organization "to protect the public interest by promoting government and corporate accountability." Bet it never gets invited to a Bush White House dinner.

GAP issued a report last summer about the USDA's protection of ConAgra, which was ultimately forced to recall 19 million pounds of tainted meat -- E. coli bacteria was the problem. A small Montana meat-processing plant had reported to the USDA that ConAgra was shipping such meat, but the department stonewalled the complaint for two years while the potentially lethal meat was shipped to consumers.

According to the GAP report, "Numerous whistle blowers during GAP's investigation disclosed that top USDA officials took actions to shield the giant food conglomerate from safety laws, while using the same laws to bully small, often family-run businesses."

The state of the meat and poultry I buy at the local markets has never been of concern to me, but I'm beginning to get alarmed. There's the mad cow disease, which showed up in Washington state and some authorities believe will be found elsewhere in these Lower 48 states. Yikes.

Just last week, it was reported that 12,0000 chickens had been destroyed in Delaware because of an outbreak of bird flu in the flock. That bird flu was the H7 type that is fatal to poultry but not humans -- not yet. The fear is that it might swap genes with the human strain, and then more than those chickens and their owners would be in trouble.

Wouldn't it be comforting if we knew the current administration was on our side?