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                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 6, 1993                   TAG: 9302060015
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

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FDA PROMISES BETTER MEAT-INSPECTION SYSTEM

Agriculture Secretary Mike Espy said Friday his department will quickly upgrade its meat inspection system and eventually replace it with one using better science.

Espy told a Senate Agriculture subcommittee it is impossible now to prevent future food-poisoning outbreaks such as recently occurred in Washington. "But we are moving on a separate track to be sure it is possible in the future," he said.

However, Espy said, "I am not in a position to provide you with information on the administration's position on funding for specific proposals and activities."

But he said he will ask President Clinton and federal budget writers for permission to hire 550 more meat inspectors.

The department's program includes upgrading the present inspection regimen, and eventually creating a new one based on more advanced science and "risk assessment," identifying critical points in production from the animal to the kitchen, Espy said.

The subcommittee is investigating the food poisonings last month in Washington and other Western states. Hundreds of children were sickened and one died after eating hamburgers contaminated with a strain of E. coli bacteria known as O157:H7. One more child is gravely ill.

The hamburgers were served at Jack in the Box restaurants.

Critics called the plan a warmed-over list of recommendations already offered in the past administration by the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service, largely in consultation with the meat industry.

`Why not just remove the `wholesome' label so the buyer isn't misled?" said Carol Tucker Forman, head of the Safe Food Coalition, a consumer group.

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