Guess Whats Coming With Dinner?
THE FIELD OFFICE of the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture that handles Philadelphia is headed by lameduck Congressman Jimmy Byrne’s brother. The State inspects all food establishments except restaurants and operates along lines similar to Philadelphia’s Health Department. Frequently, City and State jurisdictions overlap, causing duplicate inspections, wasted man-hours and a drain on limited financial resources.
The competence of state inspectors is under fire these days from several sources. Ralph Nader claims that they worry about cracks in the wall, while ignoring the purity of meat and food products. Local observers in Philadelphia complain that too many state inspectors were hired before civil service and that their training has been casual.
The United States Department of Agriculture has self-righteously blasted Pennsylvania meat inspections as inadequate and unprofessional. In fact, the federal government has taken over all meat inspecting in the state because of Harrisburg’s failure to provide regional inspections that match federal standards. Earl Butz’s Washington office has accused the Shapp administration of failing to hire enough new inspectors to adequately re-inspect problem areas. Pennsylvania’s secretary of agriculture, James A. McHale, has defended the meat inspections of his department and accused the USDA of persecuting him and Shapp because they are Democrats and Nixon and Butz are Republicans.
Be that as it may, Shapp will now save $1.5 million a year as a result of the federal takeover, but about 300 small meat-packing plants throughout the state will probably be forced to close because they fall so far short of federal specifications. While all this political infighting has been going on, no one in Harrisburg is prepared to admit how good or how bad Pennsylvania meat really is. Most Philadelphians consume meat that passes federal inspection, but other areas in the state are far less fortunate.
And federal inspection isn’t all that great, either.
The dossier on U.S. secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz’s department grows grimmer with each page. For example, the artificial coloring that the USDA uses to stamp federally inspected meat in Philadelphia is composed of a chemical whose brand is "Violet # I." The World Health Organization has banned the use of this chemical outside of the States because preliminary tests have shown that it may be a cause of cancer in humans.
The granddaddy of all food and sanitation regulatory agencies is the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
The Philadelphia district extends over half of eastern Pennsylvania, all of South Jersey and encompasses the entire state of Delaware. Over 50 field inspectors are assigned to the district. They are part of 210 national inspectors who are charged with policing over 60,000 plants that process food. After recent scares involving cyclamates and artificial sweeteners, mercury in tuna fish, and botulism bacteria in Bon Vivant and Campbell’s soups, the FDA admitted that it was lucky if it could inspect each plant once every five years. In 1969 Congress decided to reorganize the FDA because of "gross incompetence." That reorganization is finally scheduled to take place this year.
