POISONING PEOPLE - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 74

Espy went on to announce that the USDA had asked the FDA to legalize irradiation of beef, veal, pork,
and lamb. Poultry already had been approved for irradiation in 1990. As part of the American Meat Insti-
tute's push for irradiation, the industry's trade association had submitted a petition to the FDA asking that
the agency legalize the technique's use for meat. Irradiation was the silver bullet they had been looking for
since it would help erase the sins of dirty meat and fast slaughter lines. Irradiation was viewed by many in
the industry as the ticket to reducing their liability under the self-regulatory regime of HACCP.
It is clear that the Clinton administration had HACCP in mind from the beginning. In the spring of 1994,
Mike Espy interviewed Mike Taylor—master of the government-industry revolving door. Taylor had been
deputy commissioner for policy at the FDA since 1991; he had written not only the deceptive-labeling
guidelines that prohibit dairies from labeling milk rBGH-free, but also the HACCP guidelines for seafood.
Seafood safety had become a major issue in the previous two decades, since the Centers for Disease Con-
trol (CDC) was reporting that almost 3 percent of food-borne illnesses were from seafood. HACCP was
promoted to the seafood industry as a way to put the industry in charge of maintaining safety through im-
proving its procedures for processing.
The seafood regulations mandated under the Clinton administration in 1997 were based on the HACCP
guidelines that were first developed by Taylor in 1991. HACCP had been described by an official from the
FDA Office of Seafood as “something that the industry would do, while FDA would examine how well
these establishments were doing it.” 2
And Taylor—with his long history of bouncing between the industry lobby shop King and Spalding,
agribusiness giant Monsanto, and the FDA—was a perfect choice to finesse morphing USDA's inspection
into a self-regulating HACCP system. He was an experienced lobbyist who could talk smoothly to the in-
dustry and the consumer advocacy community with comforting words. As Espy began suffering a free fall
from a corruption scandal, Taylor stepped in to do cleanup. During the next two years as administrator of
USDA's FSIS and acting undersecretary for food safety, he became HACCP's biggest cheerleader.
However, Taylor had to convince consumer organizations that HACCP was the right program. He also
had to create an environment for convincing the media (and through them the public) that the new system
would prevent more Jack in the Box-like incidents. He handled this task skillfully by talking about the
creation of a science-based food safety system, and in the fall of 1994 he told the American Meat Institute
that E. coli 0157:H7 would be regulated as an adulterant in ground beef. This single act, along with the
access Taylor granted consumer groups to high-level agency meetings, convinced many inside the Beltway
that HACCP was the answer to food safety.
While Taylor strategized on how to pacify all sides of the debate, Espy was dealing with the corruption
allegations. He had made some dangerous enemies in the beef industry, including a large feedlot operation
that filed a lawsuit against USDA for unfair practices that were seen as favoring the poultry industry at
the expense of beef. After it was revealed that Espy had solicited and received gifts from Tyson Foods and
other companies that USDA regulated, he announced his resignation in fall 1994. An investigation culmin-
ated in a thirty-nine-count indictment against Espy for accepting $36,000 in gifts, for which a jury later
acquitted him. 3
Dan Glickman, a ten-term congressman from Wichita, replaced Espy as secretary of agriculture early in
1995. He was considered a shoo-in: he had spent eighteen years serving on the House Agriculture Com-
mittee, and he knew how to work an old boys' network. But Glickman's confirmation became heated, as
investigators spent three months reviewing his parking tickets, credit card expenses, and bounced checks
at the disgraced House Bank.
As Glickman began to take stock of his new job, HACCP promoter Taylor was already working behind
the scenes to undo more than a century of meat inspection regulation. Taylor was either naive or cyn-
ical—he was about to trade inspection for treatments. The meat industry wanted inspectors out of the