Are Farmland Industries a direct competitor to IBP in the beef market? If
so its a pretty slick way to CYA and trash you competition at the same
time. Also makes one wonder about the effectiveness of HACCP. Mike Miller
>U.S. PURSUES CRIMINAL PROBE OF IBP UNIT RELATED TO FINDING OF CARCINOGEN IN
>BEEF
>
>By Bruce Ingersoll
>Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
>Published Wednesday, April 5, 2000 Page A3
>
>WASHINGTON (Dow Jones) --Federal food-safety regulators are pursuing a
>criminal investigation into bookkeeping irregularities at an IBP Inc.
>subsidiary as part of a broader probe of how a banned carcinogen got into
>U.S.beef exports.
>
>Disorder in the meat-processing and shipping records at IBP's Bruss Co. has
>greatly complicated the government's efforts to trace the origins of an
>illegal hormone known as DES in two shipments of beef to Switzerland,
>Agriculture Department officials said.
>
>"We've discovered some irregularities," said Beth Gaston, a spokeswoman for
>the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service. "There is an open
>criminal investigation."
>
>The matter could turn into a major test case for the government. So far, no
>evidence has been uncovered to suggest that there is a black market in DES
>or any illegal use of the growth stimulant, which was banned by the Food
>and Drug Administration in 1979. But regulators take any record-keeping
>problems very seriously, because the government's new hazard-control system
>at the nation's meat and poultry plants rests on the integrity of each
>plant's books and records.
>
>Bruss officials couldn't be reached for comment. Gary Mickelson, a
>spokesman for IBP, Dakota Dunes, S.D., said, "Based on what we've heard, it
>appears to be a paperwork issue, not a food-safety issue." Bruss
>specializes in exporting premium cuts of beef for its parent, IBP, the
>nation's largest meatpacker, and it processes and exports meat from other
>packing companies as well.
>
>Last summer, the Swiss government notified Washington that DES, or
>diethylstilbestrol, which is also illegal in Switzerland, had been detected
>in two samples of supposedly hormone-free beef.
>
>Earlier this year, Swiss officials identified one of the tainted samples as
>coming from Bruss and the other from a Bruss supplier, National Beef
>Packing Co. in Liberal, Kan. At the time, IBP's Mickelson cited Bruss
>records as showing that none of the beef in question came from an IBP plant.
>
>But in a status report on its DES investigation, the Agriculture Department
>acknowledged "concerns about the (Bruss) plant's record-keeping and the
>accuracy of information relating to the original slaughter plant listed as
>the source of the beef exported to Switzerland."
>
>The report also raises the possibility that National Beef may not have been
>the source of DES-tainted beef after all.
>
>"We've never seen any documentation that it was our meat," said John
>Miller, chief executive officer of National Beef, a unit of Farmland
>Industries Inc., Kansas City, Mo. "We believe we're the innocent party that
>got stung here."
>
>While Agriculture Department investigators have been trying to unscramble
>Bruss records and trace meat shipments into and out of the company's plant,
>FDA inspectors have been conducting an enforcement sweep throughout much of
>the Midwest and Great Plains, checking up on more than 120 feedlots, farms
>and sale barns known to supply National Beef with cattle. The FDA also has
>been looking into how much DES is being imported into the U.S.
>
>The FDA hasn't caught any cattle producers using DES, nor has it found any
>large shipments of the synthetic hormone being imported by veterinary drug
>formulators and put to illegal use.
>
>DES was widely used as a growth stimulant in cattle and other
>food-producing animals until the early 1970s, when it was found to cause
>cancer and infertility problems in the daughters of women who had taken it
>to avoid premature labor and miscarriage. While outlawing its use in food
>animals, the FDA continued to let veterinarians use it to treat dogs for
>incontinence.
>
>The Food Safety and Inspection Service stopped testing meat for DES in
>1991, after failing to detect any cases of contamination for several years.
>But the agency intends to resume testing it in veal and beef within a month.
>
>The government has taken the DES matter "very seriously," but has yet to
>unearth evidence of misuse said Karen Hulebak, a senior scientist at the
>food-safety agency. "We believe the (Swiss) finding was an anomaly, and
>that DES wasn't used in U.S. beef."
>
>END - DOW JONES NEWS 04-05-00
>
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