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Hallmark Recall Reveals Faults in System

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

The Hallmark/Westland ground beef recall, largest in U.S. history, revolves around the failure of the company to abide by federal regulations and the failure of federal inspectors to catch the violations earlier.  The recall questions the effectiveness of our nation’s food safety policies and whether or not they need to be improved or altogether changed.

According to the Baltimore Sun,

"The video of the Hallmark plant is evidence of what can happen when packing plants are left to police themselves without the government oversight they need," said Trent Berhow, vice chairman of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, which represents 6,500 U.S. Department of Agriculture inspectors.

"When the company is in charge of creating their own records and doing their own food safety checks, they're not going to find problems themselves," he said.

The USDA currently has in place a variety of rules and regulations that establishments need to implement.  Much of this in slaughterhouses requires taking note of which areas of the plant are vulnerable for harboring disease, coming up with a plan to fix it, and then implementing the plan.  The majority of the responsibility lies with the company, while the government officials are in place to verify that actions are being done.

This system poses a huge problem when companies aren’t being honest about keeping up with federal regulations and when there aren’t enough inspectors to make sure everything is going according to plan. The government implemented stricter policies under the Bush administration, which have somewhat been effective. The beef industry maintains that the Hallmark case is unique and does not exemplify practices throughout the industry, but there are other opinions to be had.

"What happened out in California was a good example of a plant sneaking things by," said William G. Hughes, lawyer for the National Association of Federal Veterinarians, which has 950 members. "You have to have sufficient inspection staff to guarantee that nothing is going to go wrong."

"There's a lot of room for improvement, but I don't think there's a lot of alternatives," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, director of food safety at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "The industry plays a vital role in ensuring the safety of its products, and the government's role should be to ensure that's done correctly."

Whether or not the food safety system needs a drastic retooling or just some strict improvements remains debatable. However, the Hallmark/Westland recall has brought the issue to the forefront of the American conscience and shows the dangers of a faulty system.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on March 07, 2008 (boomark / email).