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'Modern Meat'
With Doug Hamilton
Producer, "Frontline"
Friday, April 19, 2002; 11 a.m. EDT
The hamburger has become our national food: Americans eat more meat than any other people in the world, and the average person devours three hamburgers a week. And today's beef costs 30 percent less than it did in 1970. But how much does the average American know about the beef they're eating?
Despite new federal safety regulations, more than 100 million pounds of meat has been recalled since 1998 due to suspected bacterial contamination. And just last summer, the nation's largest meat processor had to recall 500,000 pounds of beef contaminated with e.coli bacteria from 17 states. Have dramatic changes in the U.S. meat industry compromised the overall safety of American beef? And are the new federal regulations enough to guarantee the safety of the meat we eat?
FRONTLINE's "Modern Meat," airing on PBS Thursday, April 18, at 9 p.m. EST (check local listings), explores these and other questions. Producer Doug Hamilton was online to talk about what he learned on Friday, April 19.
The transcript follows.
Hamilton, a veteran television producer for CBS News and "60 Minutes," has produced six films for FRONTLINE, including "Modern Meat": "Drug Wars"; "Making Babies"; "Fooling With Nature"; "Hot Guns"; and "So You Want to Buy a President." He has won two Emmys and one Peabody Award for his work.
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Framingham, Mass.: After watching the program, I've reflexively sworn off ground hamburger. But are the safety risks any different then say, ground turkey?
Doug Hamilton: The salmonella levels in ground turkey are higher, actually, than in ground beef, and the allowable levels that are set in the regulations are higher. So there are problems that exist in the other types of meat also.
Placerville, Calif.: What about mad cow disease? My uncle died a few weeks ago from CJD, one of the fatal diseases defined as "mad cow disease."
The CDC had frightening info about the rate of infection in the U.S.
Why not address this? Are they ANY ways to avoid this as consumers?
Thank you.
Doug Hamilton: Obviously, there is great concern about Mad Cow. There has been conflicting evidence about what the risks are for meat eaters in the United States. A Harvard study came out and said that the risks were low that we would have mad cow here, but a few weeks later the GAO said that there were indeed problems. Because the resulting disease is so terrible, it is obviously something the USDA and the meat industry is very concerned about. The USDA has taken many steps to avoid a large-scale problem, but that's not to say that mad cow will never show up in the U.S. We addressed it only very briefly in the program, and only wish we had more time to talk about it.
Randolph, N.J.: Our 17-month-old son contracted E. coli 0157:H7 from an unknown source last October 2001. We were very fortunate in his full recovery.
Needless to say, I was thoroughly interested in your program.
I'm wondering if the meat industry is doing anything to support medical research in food-borne illnesses? There is currently no cure for E. coli 0157:H7 or its potential effects such as Hemolytic Uremic Syndrome and the only care available is supportive.
I guess it would be contradictory of the meat industry to support medical research to help those affected by food-borne bacteria if they believe that their supply is safe, but funding is probably needed in the research in this area and their monies would certainly be of help.
Doug Hamilton: I'm not aware of any industry-sponsored research into cures for or antibiotics to treat e.coli 0157:H7, but that's an interesting thought.
Bentonville, Ark.: When is "Frontline" going to air about the poultry industry? I am a retired (early) USDA IIC Inspector of a fully cooked poultry processing plant. I had to retire early because of this new regulation HACCP. I felt I could not do my job properly. Even my former supervisor is now detailed three hours away from his assignment because of trying to do his job properly. Company complained to USDA. Doing your job properly sometimes means down time and condemning product which costs the big industry money when there is deficiencies.
Doug Hamilton: We had to make a choice and couldn't focus on all kinds of meat. But certainly, some USDA inspectors tell similar stories, whether they work in a beef or poultry or pork processing plant.
Washington, D.C.: I'm a mathematician at USDA. I was very surprised to hear from co-workers that our inspectors do not have unlimited access to beef and poultry plants. Why would Congress only give USDA inspectors limited access to check on food quality?
Doug Hamilton: They have access -- the inspectors do have access. But the significant changes to the regulation was that the companies themselves designed their own HACCP process and company employees carry out much of the inspection. And then it is the role of the USDA inspector to oversee that process, and make sure it's being done adequately.
Columbia, Md.: In September 2000, the GAO issued a report on federal agencies' preparedness for a bioterrorism attack. The GAO reported that USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service had no bioterrorism plan and considered such a plan to be unnecessary. Based on your investigation, would you agree with FSIS?
Doug Hamilton: Obviously, the events of Sept. 11 have changed everyone's perspective about the need to prepare for bioterrorism. The industry itself is very worried about this and has increased security. And I would think that the USDA should absolutely have adequate response plans.
Takoma Park, Md.: Three things that convinced me to stop eating hamburgers:
1. The book "Fast Food Nation" (describing the unsafe and unsanitary conditions at slaughterhouses)
2. The New York Times Sunday Magazine article two weeks ago about the life of a steer. (describing the unsanitary conditions at the feedlots and the unnatural foods beef cattle eat).
3. The "Frontline" episode last night. (ditto for the feedlots, plus the inadequate USDA protections for American consumers).
Is the chicken industry any better?
Doug Hamilton: Similar conditions exist in the chicken industry. See earlier response.
Silver Spring, Md.: My wife, a physician, fears that irradiating hamburger would mean that the meat and bacteria would end up with essentially the same DNA, making any contamination even more dangerous. I don't understand this. Can you explain?
Doug Hamilton: Irradiation has been extensively tested. It has been shown to kill most of the known pathogens, including salmonella and e.coli. But indeed, irradiation is not a cure-all. It does not eliminate the risk of Mad Cow Disease. And nature is indeed very inventive, and would surely find ways around irradiation too.
Washington, D.C.: Is Kosher meat safer to eat than non-Kosher meat?
Doug Hamilton: Not necessarily. I think it all depends on the standards of the individual company.
Charleston, W.Va.: How long did it take to get inside of the factories to take a look at what was going on?
Doug Hamilton: We spent eight months reporting and filming this story. the footage inside a meat-packing plant was actually footage we acquired, because no major slaughterhouse would let us in their facilities. We spent months talking to every person we could think of in the industry to try to get access both to the plants and some of the executives to talk about some of the conditions and their food safety efforts. Almost all companies would not even talk to us off the record. And one company agreed to let us film inside their plant, only to cancel on us only a couple of days before our shoot. It was indeed disappointing that no executives in major companies within the industry would talk with us.
The meat industry has indeed worked very hard to improve food safety as a whole. We believe the meat industry has an important story to tell, and we wish they had come forward to tell it.
Jack in the Box was very helpful, and did allow us to film inside their hamburger meat-grinding plant, and I think it strengthened the film to have them show the challenges as well as what they've been able to do to improve the safety of their product.
To me, one of the most interesting things about this story was seeing where your food comes from. We have the image that our food is coming from a farm, and more and more it's coming from a factory. We focused specifically on beef, but I think it's true in so much of what we eat, we would be surprised to see where it comes from. I know that Michael Pollan, the New York Times writer who wrote the story on the life of a steer a couple of weeks ago in the magazine, quoted one of the responses to the story -- one from a kid who said he didn't realize that you had to kill a cow to get hamburgers. He thought the process was more like milking it.
Overland Park, Kan.: Can one detect tainted meat by the looks and appearance of the material? Or, does the butcher shop have something they can sprinkle on the meat to make it appear fresh?
Doug Hamilton: No. The problem with these pathogens is that they are invisible. Consumers can protect themselves by following basic rules of good food handling, checking the expiration date, handling the meat properly so that you clean any cutting surface where the raw meat has been before you put anything else on it, and cooking the meat thoroughly. But the problem for consumers is that there is no way to tell. And, as Carol Tucker Forman, the head of food safety for the Consumer Federation of America, says, the problem with the USDA seal of approval is that you think it means that the meat is safe, and there's no real way for the consumer to know.
Johnson City, Tenn.: Doug --
Nice piece. How much information did you uncover about testing methods? The microbiology methods that were shown take upwards of 48 hours to get results on whether the meat would contain E. Coli or Salmonella. There are slightly more expensive technologies out there that can get results in as little as six hours. Are they being used? Could their use help meat processors find out about contamination sooner and reduce the number of recalls?
Thanks.
Doug Hamilton: The testing process can be inefficient, and given the need to get fresh raw meat out to the consumer as quickly as possible, the delays in getting the test results back do create problems. Oftentimes, when contaminated meat is discovered, that meat has already been shipped out and can be all over the country.
One example that we talk about in the film was a IBP recall of ground beef last summer, where 500,000 pounds of ground beef had to be recalled for e.coli contamination, and it was already in 19 states. So the volume of production magnifies any risk of bad meat getting out to consumers.
One of the protections the consumer has is that the meat companies would be liable.
Olney, Md.: Good afternoon: I love hamburgers as much as anyone but the news lately seems to indicate that the industry has gotten worse not better since the publication of Jeremy Rifkin's book, "Beyond Beef" in 1993 (I did quit eating beef for a while after reading it). Public confidence in food safety is critical to our economy. Why does the industry fight so hard against increased inspections?
Doug Hamilton: That's a great question. I'm not sure I can give a good answer to that. The beef industry would respond that they have worked very hard to improve inspection. But many people, including many people in the industry, have wondered why some within the meat industry have supported the Supreme Beef case.
Alexandria, Va.: Mr. Hamilton, thanks very much for bringing this superb story to an inexcusably ignorant public.
I am concerned about the story behind what you aired -- the disgusting mistreatment of the animals in handling and slaughter. It would appear that many, if not most, factory-farmed animals are butchered while still alive.
Beyond the policy levels of government, are the field USDA inspectors to blame? They seem terribly lax.
Doug Hamilton: Because of current events, including the Supreme Beef decision, we focused our story mainly on food safety. Indeed, there are questions about humane slaughter, and in fact the Washington Post did a terrific series on last April. One of the interesting recent developments on the humane slaughter issue is the role that McDonalds has played. Temple Grandin, one of the industry's leading humane slaughter experts, has worked with McDonalds to improve conditions for the animals. And she told us that because of the clout McDonalds has in the marketplace, they have done a remarkable job of improving the humane slaughter conditions and reducing the number of animals that are not brain-dead at the time of slaughter. You can take a look at the Frontline Web site for more discussion of humane slaughter issues.
San Diego, Calif.: I had an E. coli infection in August 2001. Luckily for me, my doctor ordered a test which confirmed the diagnosis since I was initially told that I had a "virus." We discussed what I had eaten for the last few days and I mentioned that I had fried a hamburger. We assumed that was the culprit. Even though I thought that it was cooked thoroughly, apparently it wasn't. After I was released from the hospital after losing lots of blood and being very ill I looked at the package at home and it was one of the large meat packers that have bulk packages. At the time I was thankful that I was not in the vulnerable category for death. Later I got angry. But who would I contact? How could I prove that was how I got e Coli? Who do we contact or comment to about this? Or do we just stay quiet and blame ourselves because we "didn't cook it long enough?"
Doug Hamilton: Ever since the Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control have done much more extensive monitoring for food-borne illness. But you are right; it is very hard first to determine if you have a food-borne illness, because often the symptoms are similar to flu, and secondly, if you have a confirmed case of e.coli contamination, it is nearly impossible to find the culprit. The CDC has begun doing very high-tech DNA analysis, and it might have been possible to test the meat in your refrigerator with your e.coli test and sample to determine if indeed that's where the infection came from. But without that kind of scientific intervention and extensive efforts, it's very hard to make the link.
It surprised me to read the CDC's total numbers on food-borne illness. They estimate that one in four Americans suffers an important bout of food-borne illness each year; 350,000 people are hospitalized, and 5,000 die. Many of those illnesses are attributable to meat and poultry.
Oakland, Calif.: Doug,
Since you were unable to interview National Meat Association, we have helpfully provided information on our Web site that more fully explains the recent court decision and our position.
You can visit NMA's "Modern Meat" response page online, under "What's New."
Thanks,
Jeremy Russell
Director of Communications
National Meat Association
Doug Hamilton: I am indeed sorry that we were not able to do an interview with you executive director, Rosemary Mucklow. As you know, she cancelled our interview on March 19. After that, we had to make other plans to get industry responses. And when Ms. Mucklow contacted us to say she was available, it was the last week of our edit and was too late.
Falls Church, Va.: What do you think of Sen. Harkin's proposal (inserted in the currently-being-debated Farm Bill) that would allow irradiated meat to be called "pasteurized?" Several public interest groups are against this.
Doug Hamilton: It was really surprising to me that Sen. Harkin (D-Iowa) slipped that provision into the Farm Bill. I understand that one of the companies that would most benefit from that is in his home state.
Eureka, Nev.: As a fourth-generation beef producer, I pride myself in producing a healthy and safe product for consumers. The vast majority of all beef produced in this country comes from extensive, non-confined environments and animal welfare takes precedence over profits for most beef producers. Contrast this with the intensive, vertically integrated pork and poultry industries where profit margins necessitate confinement, sub-therapeutic antibiotic use, and unsafe working conditions for employees of these factory farms.
I think a frontline investigation of confinement production settings and the poultry and pork slaughter industries would alert consumers to the fact that beef isn't the villain it too often is represented to be.
Doug Hamilton: I agree with you that there are many wonderful ranchers and farmers in the business of producing meat. Dale Lassiter, who was in our film, has a remarkable commitment to high-quality production and a long family tradition of this. By focusing on beef, we in no way meant to comment on conditions in poultry or pork production.
College Park, Md.: As a vegetarian (no, I'm not here to preach), the scariest thing about the meat industry is the use of antibiotics to keep the animals alive long enough to slaughter. The overuse of these antibiotics not only increases the resistance of diseases, but also accumulate in the body of the consumer and build a tolerance (creating a vicious cycle).
Why are there no requirements for labeling regarding the amount and types of antibiotics in meat?
Doug Hamilton: That's a very important question. The World Health Organization ranks antibiotic resistance as one of the three top public health priorities. We did mention this issue in the story, but unfortunately we did not have the time to go into it in more depth. There is a terrific book written in the '80s by Orville Schell, called "Modern Meat," which explores this issue in great detail.
Alexandria, Va.: Are you a vegetarian?
Doug Hamilton: No. I ate meat before I did this story, and I continue to eat it now. One thing the story has done is made me want to know where my meat is coming from.
Mt. Morris, Ill.: To the person who lost his/her uncle to CJD, my condolences. However, he probably died of classical CJD and not variant CJD which has been associated with BSE but there is no concrete connection. Also, BSE has never been found in the U.S. and we have at least three firewalls to keep it out.
I believe "Modern Meat" was too one-sided toward the anti-meat sector. I've visited a number of processing plants. Most have very extensive and expensive laboratories that track down pathogens. The meat industry regularly meets to share ideas about improving meat safety. I regularly receive notices of recalls but in most instances, the recall includes the statement "No incidences of illnesses have been reported in connection with this product."
My question to Doug Hamilton is: Why didn't you feature one of the many exemplary meat processing plants?
Doug Hamilton: We did. The Jack in the Box meat grinding plant is absolutely state-of-the-art. We have Mark Anderson of Jack in the Box talking about their extensive food safety procedures, which he is very proud of. And no representative from any major meat packing company would talk to us on the record.
We tried very hard to show the efforts these companies have been making.
Arlington, Va.: If things are bad in meat packing plants, how do you explain the 23 percent drop since 1996 of food-borne illnesses such as E. coli and salmonella that USDA announced on Thursday, crediting improved management of animal slaughter, agriculture practices and regulations?
Doug Hamilton: We report in the hour the drop in salmonella in raw meat after HACCP came in. We also report the decline in food-borne illness, as told by Robert Tauxe, whose department released those new figures. We also include those new numbers and the USDA and HHS press releases on our Web site.
Silver Spring, Md.: As you pointed out, 5,000 people die every year from food-borne illness, twice the number of people who died on Sept. 11. That is so shocking it is almost incomprehensible. Where is the "War on Food Poisoning?" What is the Bush administration doing to fight this scourge?
Doug Hamilton: HHS Secretary Thompson announced yesterday [in a press release] that "We must continue to expand our efforts to keep America's food supply the safest it can be."
Many, however, are concerned that the Bush administration's decision to not appeal the Supreme Beef case is a significant step backwards in our efforts to improve food safety.
washingtonpost.com:
That wraps up today's show. Thanks to everyone who joined the
discussion.
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