(Note from Mike C.: USDA's failure to enforce the antitrust laws protecting competition in our marketplace, ignoring food safety problems in the biggest food processing plants, and implementing farm bills that destroy family farmers, is proof that USDA has put the profits of their friends in big agribusiness before the American people. The revolving door from industry to USDA, like the appointment of undersecretary J.B. Penn, formerly with Sparks Consulting, is paying off. Freedom is lost when money power becomes political power.)

January 27, 2003

The story below should sound like a broken record: Inspectors who are audacious enough to document food safety problems have been told to ignore these problems, and allow the big packers to continue operations without corrective actions.

Their recommendations for enforcement actions have been ignored, and they are being told that they have "lost sight of the big picture." Not only does the FSIS bureaucracy ignore their findings, but it also criticizes these "shortsighted" inspectors after an outbreak does in fact occur.

Following the four positive e.coli samples taken at our plant last January & February, the Inspector at our plant plus his supervisor authored and signed a letter which specifically identified ConAgra plant # 969 as the origin of the contaminated meat.

This letter was faxed to the Minneapolis District Office on Friday, March 1, 2002.

How did the District Office respond?

The following Monday, the FSIS -- Food Safety Inspection Service -- veterinarian who was one of the co-signatories to the letter sheepishly approached me and said "I have been told to politely ask you to return that letter."

Why in the world would FSIS attempt to cover up the contents of this evidence of the source of contaminated meat? For the same reason that inspectors all over America have been hindered (under HACCP - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, a Food and Drug Administration -- FDA -- program) by their superiors from (1) documenting problems, and (2) requiring enforcement actions at the large packers.

Since I went public with the details of the sordid scenario which occurred at our plant last year, I have received numerous unsolicited communications from inspectors all over America. A common denominator they share is that they receive no support from above when they document food safety problems, and in essence are told to shut up and don't stir the water. They claim that this situation did not exist prior to HACCP, but is now the inevitable result of FSIS retreating from traditional "Hands On" meat inspection, and allowing the plants to police themselves.

Will the industry have to experience another Jack-In-The-Box before FSIS sees the light? Will it require the deaths, caused by contaminated meat, of children and grandchildren of FSIS employees before necessary changes are made? Just what will it take?

John W. Munsell, President

Montana Quality Foods & Processing

Miles City, MT 59301

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Subject: Food safety activists speak out about USDA whistleblower reprisal

Food safety activists speak out about USDA whistleblower reprisal

Second public interest coalition assails, in stronger terms, USDA's reprisal against whistleblowers

January 24, 2003

For More Information:

Felicia Nestor

201-330-1618

Martin Edwin Andersen

202-403 0034, x 143

A coalition of safe-food public interest groups, all members of the Global Safe Food Alliance, today scored the treatment of a federal food safety whistleblower at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

In a letter sent to department Secretary Ann Veneman, the groups noted that Vince Erthal, a federal inspector at the Wampler meatpacking plant in Franconia, Pennsylvania, had repeatedly warned his supervisors of conditions at the facility that in September 2002 led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history.

Erthal's treatment by senior agriculture officials, they reported, "unfairly discredits him, could tend to diminish public interest in his allegations, and consequently, unjustly threatens the integrity of honest public debate."

The group cited claims made by Undersecretary of Food Safety Elsa Murano that Erthal "doesn't have proof" of his whistleblower disclosures, and that she hinted he was responsible for the tragic listeria outbreak because he did not push "harder to blow the whistle" or didn't blow the whistle sooner.

"Many of Mr. Erthal's food safety efforts were overruled by the Inspector-in-Charge at the plant and company management had advanced warnings of USDA sampling for listeria," the group wrote Veneman.

"Most significantly, on two occasions prior to the recall, Mr. Erthal's recommendations that (Food Safety Inspection Service/FSIS) management initiate strong enforcement action, which were based on abundant documentation of violations at the plant, were overruled."

Murano's statements, the group said, "seem to indicate that agency officials either do not have confidence in the agency's normal channels to protect public health and safety -- or are reluctant to take responsibility for agency actions. It is at the very least misleading for the agency to attempt to rebut Mr. Erthal's claims by citing his lack of proof.

As Undersecretary of the agency, Dr. Murano is certainly aware that inspectors are prohibited from removing government documents from the inspected establishments or from copying such documents for their own personal use."

Referring to Secretary Veneman, the group added: "An expectation that inspectors blow the whistle when there are no effective legal means for their protection, particularly at an agency where retaliation and harassment of inspectors for whistleblowing is commonplace, is seriously flawed. If the agency's strategy for preventing further listeria outbreaks relies, even in part, on whistleblowing inspectors then you must at least provide active leadership in restoring protection for them or the public is in trouble. … While media attention to Mr. Erthal's revelations seem, at least so far, to have provided him some protections, whistleblowers outside the public spotlight are often harassed through relentless patterns of retaliatory investigations, subsequent adverse actions and gag orders."

Today's letter follows a similar complaint made last week about the lack of USDA whistleblower protection delivered to Veneman during a meeting with another public interest alliance called the Safe Food Coalition.

That letter also complained about the USDA's treatment of Erthal.

"In this 'year of the whistleblower,' the USDA's reaction is an egregious example of defensive bureaucrats shooting the messenger of bad news," said Felicia Nestor, food safety coordinator for the Government Accountability Project, a Washington, D.C.-based good government organization.

"The only 'crime' Vince Erthal is guilty of is being a serial truth teller. The USDA's shameful treatment of him sends a chilling warning signal to all those who might have to weigh whether acting in the public's interest is a career stopper."

"The Department has no basis for making allegations against Mr. Erthal," added Rod Leonard, Executive Director of the Community Nutrition Institute, another signatory of the letter to Veneman.

"It has consistently withheld information that is damaging and every reporter that has covered this issue knows that the department has consistently denigrated inspectors on the front line. ... When they have nothing else to say agency officials blame the inspectors for their own failings."

"Unfortunately, the response by the highest officials in USDA to Mr. Erthal's allegations are typical of this Department," added Wenonah Hauter, director of Public Citizen's Critical Mass Energy and Environment Program.

"Instead of backing up their own employees, USDA management officials always seem to circle the wagons and try to discredit the messenger. What is also astonishing is the attempt by USDA to stonewall Congress regarding this investigation. It's bad enough that consumers can't get the straight story out of USDA, but the department is also refusing to come clean with our elected officials who are responsible for its oversight."

"The dereliction of duty of USDA management to effectively enforce U.S. meat and poultry hygiene laws at the Wampler plant and elsewhere, and the hostility of management towards federal meat inspection employees, will alarm food safety officials in other countries," noted Steve Suppan, director of research of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, another of the signers of the letter to Veneman.

"Delegates to an international meat and poultry hygiene meeting in mid-February should ask tough questions of the USDA delegate's response to a draft text that would legitimate in World Trade Organization recognized standards the effective control of meat and poultry inspection by companies. The effective takeover of inspection by companies has occurred at the Wampler plant and throughout the United States under the USDA's implementation of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) program."

Other signers of the letter to Veneman include:

Alice Slater, president, Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE);

Joe Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety;

Tom Taylor, Midwest and Southeast Field Organizer for the Organic Consumers Association;

Mike Callicrate, Cattlemen's Legal Fund and

Tom Devine, GAP legal director.

Letters can be found at:

Global Safe

http://www.whistleblower.org/article.php?did=295&scid=95

Food Alliance Letter to Secetary Veneman

Safe Food

http://www.whistleblower.org/article.php?did=294&scid=95

Coalition's Letter to USDA Secretary Veneman