A salmonella scare, courtesy of the president

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Staff, 4/8/2001

FOR STARTERS, let's get a fact straight: no low-level Bushie in the Agriculture Department is responsible for what very nearly became a relaxation of the government's rule for testing meat sold to places like the public schools.

That's the official line from both rookie Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman and the White House, and it is flat-out false. The truth is that one more favor for business was routinely headed for the regulation books like all the others that have headed there since Jan. 21.

The only thing that stopped it was the outcry generated by its publication. In the odd political calculations that are governing public health policy in Bush II, salmonella in meat prepared for school kids apparently has a higher shock value than higher concentrations of arsenic in drinking water.

Indeed, career officials in the department said the outcry probably would not have been enough by itself to change the administration's clearly telegraphed intentions. In their view, what made President Bush's position untenable was the publication of the relaxed rule smack in the middle of the Senate's tense debate over the budget.

Had the administration not moved immediately, an amendment endorsing the tougher meat inspection standards would have passed overwhelmingly by sunset last Thursday, further weakening Bush's position in that high-stakes melodrama.

White lies of the Bush variety using faceless gnomes in the bureaucracy as the scapegoat for policy screw-ups are as old as the hills in government and ordinarily not even worth exposing. But this case is different because it could all happen again tomorrow.

The readiness of this administration to rubber- stamp interest group demands, especially when they involve costs of doing business, is astonishing.

Before the administration was ready to capitulate on meat, its attitude was defiant and detailed - the first clue that this was no low-level accident. The proposal, I'm told, went through the Agriculture Department like salmonella through a human and was posted on its Web site (a procedure requiring all sorts of vetting and signing off) by Wednesday of last week. The relaxation was necessary, officials argued, because the tighter standards imposed higher costs on the meat industry and had ''no basis in public health'' or were not based on ''sound science.'' Sound familiar?

The cover story is that it ''originated'' in the lower-levels of the department. The truth is that it was requested on the basis of a position staked out last summer by the powerful American Meat Institute and never encountered Bushie opposition.

Until last summer, the basic rules were that the government would buy meat from any processing plant that passed federal inspection. The problem was that microbes like salmonella can persist in such facilities. In fact, roughly 5 percent of samples tested from fully 120 million pounds of ground beef were found to contain salmonella.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there are roughly 1.4 million cases of salmonella poisoning annually, with 600 deaths. The special vulnerability of children is obvious.

What the Clinton administration did was in effect to tighten the standards that processing plants would have to meet in order to continue selling to the government and thus to the schools.

There were new tests to measure bacteria counts in general as well as special tests for deadly E-coli, a clear indicator of broader problems. Almost immediately, studies showed declines in salmonella poisoning of as much as 50 percent under the new rules. But the meat lobby protested from the outset, and it was these protests, not the intitiative of somebody in the basement of the Agriculture Department, that almost got the rules scrapped.

There is a very important moral in this tale, the lone example so far of a Bush administration move on an environmental or business regulation that has been blocked by public protests.

Simply put, the administration is going to keep trying this stuff, and only intense vigilance will suffice as a check on it. The Achilles heel of this assault on the regulatory status quo is the administration's cavalier regard for public health.

-- His Fraudulency the Liar (courtesy@GOP.com), April 09, 2001

Answers

At least he didn't lie about getting a blow job in the White House. I mean, big deal, they're just children. It's not like they're unborn fetuses or anything. Who cares what happens to them?

-- (No@big.deal), April 09, 2001.

What Globe is this? The Boston Globe? The Podunk Globe? The Supermarket Check-out Globe? The St. Petersburg, Russia Globe?

-- Globes (aren't@always.rounded), April 09, 2001.

http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/098/oped/A_salmonella_scare_courtesy _of_the_president+.shtml

-- (s@lmonella.scare), April 09, 2001.

Globes (aren't@always.rounded), When are you going to stop assuming all this stuff he is doing is nothing more than junk jurnalism and realise that he is seriously endangering the people in this country?

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), April 09, 2001.

Cherri, all your crying isn't going to make it any better. why don't you get on with your life and get over it?

-- Maria (anon@ymous.com), April 09, 2001.

Really, jeez. Just get over it. If kids die from salmonella, that's sure as hell not my problem. As long as I get my tax cut!!

-- (No@big.deal), April 09, 2001.

-- (off@off.off), April 09, 2001.

What a bunch of whinney bullshit from the socialist dipshits in our midst.

Bush is seriously "endangering" the people of this nation?

I wasn't aware that the threat of salmonella poisoning was a greater "endangerment" and risk to my health than having my children, family, neighbors, community, town and city vaporized by chinese man-made suns sent raining on us by the MIRV technology Klintoon gave to them for campaign money.

Your priorities and common sense is all fucked up nimrod.

-- Truthbenown (Upees@shit.com), April 09, 2001.

More typical liberal bullshit!

Cherri and her commie friends run around screaming the 'sky is falling' all day long and bitching because the government isn't protecting us from ourselves.

But the government knows how to use/spend money better than anyone else does so we must find more causes for them to champion for our own good!

ENOUGH ALREADY!

Go back to China where you belong for God's sake! Take Streisand, Baldwin and Cher with you.

-- A Mind (is a terrible thing to@waste.com), April 09, 2001.

Yeah, you stupid commies!! At least Bush didn't give the Chinese any of our secret technology. Other than the spy plane, I mean.

-- (here@haveA.spyPlane), April 09, 2001.

You think they aren't looking at what's in that plane, after being ordered not to now do you? After all, they are used to diplomacy and not Texas policics where people jumped and did what Bush dictated.

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), April 09, 2001.

Here...HAVE a spy plane?

No no, you got it all wrong huckleberry.

Big difference in handing ICBM, targeting and MIRV technology on a silver platter for cash, and having a spy plane with SURVELLANCE equipment rammed into and forced down in an enemy action.

All the chicoms got was molten slag motherboards and plastic chips crushed like walnuts from the spy plane. They GOT nuke secrets and targeting tech from Klintoon HANDED to them...which they now have deployed to all there ICBM's and are exporting to places like Pakistasn, Iran, Syria.....at least with the spy plane the chicoms had to work for it. Id rather the red commie chinese had our spy plane than our latest nuke tech to vaporize the shit out of us.

Klintoon has MADE the world a powderkeg. Spyplane deal is triscuits compared to all our nuke tech we lost. Id rather them be able to spy on us with stolen equipment than blow the shit out of us with our own weapons GIVEN to them.

-- Truthbenown (Upees@shit.com), April 09, 2001.

I rest my case!

Psst...somebody turn the light on for Cherri

-- Cherri is a (dumb@bitch.com), April 09, 2001.

Cherri, its worse than any of us think. The chemtrails have been increasing in frequency under King Bush II. Now we are getting goverment disinformation gestapo types trying to squelch. I wonder how much they are being paid? Or maybe they are just DGI's.

-- Forget y2k its PB2 (president@bush.two), April 09, 2001.