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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 13, 1993                   TAG: 9310130027
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B-6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

NEW LABELING'S TOUGH FOR MEAT INDUSTRY TO SWALLOW

The environmentalist group demanded warnings on all meat and poultry products in reaction to the January deaths of three children who ate poorly cooked hamburgers from a Jack in the Box restaurant in Washington state.

In addition, 500 people got ill from hamburgers that weren't fully cooked. The problems were linked to E. coli bacteria, which are not killed unless meat is thoroughly cooked.

Ground or chopped products pose an especially high risk because the surface bacteria are mingled inside the product, allowing the bacteria to multiply and avoid the high surface-cooking temperatures that could kill them.

Last week, USDA gave the food service industry until April 15 to put the safe-handling labels on all packages of uncooked meat and poultry products, but said ground and chopped products had to carry warnings beginning this week.

The government also said safe-handling information, such as brochures, should be available Friday wherever meat and poultry products are sold.

The labeling was delayed because the food industry said two months was too little time to relabel all meat and poultry products, with about 15 billion retail packages sold each year. About half of those packages contain ground or chopped products, according to one industry estimate.

Roy Oliver, meat merchandising manager for the Kroger Co.'s Mid-Atlantic Marketing Region in Roanoke, said poultry processors have to add the instructions to the wrapping used on whole turkeys; packages of sausage also have to carry it.

Also, he said, food processors and grocers are facing required nutritional labeling of meats and many hope the food safety instructions can be combined with those changes. Relabeling often is an expensive process.

It's horrible that the regulations grew out of childrens' deaths, but the new labeling might make as much sense as putting a warning on an iron telling a user that if the appliance is plugged in and turned on, it will get hot.

If a user doesn't have a basic understanding of how an iron works, he or she probably won't learn it from a label. The same goes for proper food handling and preparation.

Adding to the confusion is the practice in restaurants, where meat generally is cooked based on each customer's order. Sometimes that means serving a rare hamburger.

A worker at the Texas Steak House & Saloon at Valley View Mall and the manager of Mac & Maggies at Tanglewood Mall said if a customer orders a rare hamburger, that's the way it's served.

Jay Crockett of Mac & Maggies said there aren't as many requests for rare-cooked burgers since the E.coli incidents.

"Personally, I still eat mine medium-rare, though," he said.

Ralph Sharp, inspector in the environmental division of the Health Department in Roanoke, said restaurants are encouraged to cook hamburgers to an internal temperature of 155 degrees F., which would make the meat well-done with no pink showing.

These are only guidelines, however. Sharp suggested that when customers ask for rare burgers, the restaurant staff should inform the diner about the recommendation and say it would serve the lesser cooked meat at the customer's risk.

A trade group for wholesale grocers and food service distributors has filed a lawsuit to block implementation of the rules. The American Meat Institute, the leading trade group for meat packers and processors, threatened a lawsuit unless the timetable was changed.

Last Friday, when the deadline was extended for most products, Beyond Beef leaders accused the department of caving in to industry pressure and said they would go back to court. They said the labels are too weakly worded.

The labels tell shoppers and restaurant workers to keep raw meat refrigerated or frozen; thaw it in a refrigerator or microwave; keep it separate from other foods; wash hands and utensils after coming into contact with the raw product; cook the food thoroughly; and refrigerate leftovers quickly.

Instructions are accompanied by an appropriate picture - a refrigerator, a clock, a skillet.

The bar of soap that USDA said companies could use with the washing instructions may have to be changed, however. An industry group wants a pair of hands under a faucet substituted for the bar of soap because it's afraid some people might be confused and try to wash the food with soap.