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Editor's Note: The planned three-part Meat Processing series on the inspection program has now evolved into a four-part series. In this story we bring you previously unpublished information about the trial of Stuart Alexander. The climate this plant owner had created at his company in San Leandro, California, U.S.A., is, unfortunately, an extreme example of broader issues with the inspection program. The Santos Linguisa case illustrates the increasing rancor between processors, inspectors, consumer groups, industry representatives, and FSIS administrators over the role of government in regard to inspection and the way HACCP is being implemented. The hostile environment created by Stuart Alexander is not an isolated incident, as examples from other plants and owners illustrate.

By Bud Hazelkorn

Contents
Reaction in the Beltway
Can These Issues Be Resolved?

The 21-year-old secretary had been working at the Santos Linguisa Factory in San Leandro, CA, for less than a month, but already she had developed an attitude. "What are they doing here?" government inspectors could hear her yelling at her boss, Stuart Alexander, in his office. "They got no right to be on your property. They can't come here any time they want to." Her proddings "seemed to get him more agitated," Earl Willis, the sole inspector to survive that fateful visit, told a grand jury three months later. "That's when he came out again, yelling, 'Get off of my property. Get out of here!'" In testimony to the grand jury, the young secretary also said she made a suggestion. "Can't you, if people are trespassing on your property, fire a warning shot, like on a ranch?" "He thought he could," she testified.

That day, June 21, 2000, the two Agriculture Department compliance officers and two State of California inspectors were at the Santos Linguisa sausage company to investigate what they had suspected for the last six months: fresh product being made without inspection, a retail stand selling it, and fraudulent labeling. In addition, the group's lead agent, Jeannie Hillary, said that USDA had tracked down United Parcel Service records showing Alexander was shipping uninspected product out of state. Given that the Federal Meat Inspection Act requires USDA to guarantee the safety, wholesomeness, and proper labeling of federally inspected meat products, and Alexander was operating out of these parameters, every tenet of the 93-year-old law was being disregarded. The inspectors were present that day to rectify this total disregard of the law.

Unfortunately, Hillary, the lead agent on the case, was also the least experienced. Until the previous July, she had worked as the district's supply clerk for years, handing out office materials. She seems to have been blithely unaware of the danger she and her comrades were in. The others, though extremely apprehensive, apparently did nothing. But Hillary wasn't worried. "If he comes out with a gun," she told her comrades, "we can shut him down now," referring to the cease-and-desist order the inspectors carried with them. "Jeannie," Willis implored, "He's got the gun. We've got paper."

As Stuart Alexander could face the death penalty for allegedly shooting three inspectors in his Santos Linguisa Sausage Factory, the delicate nature of the relationships between USDA, inspectors, and processors is the focal point for the meat and poultry industry.

Reaction in the Beltway
The shots had hardly faded in San Leandro before they figuratively began again in Washington, D.C. Behind the genuine grief about the murders, factional sniping raged between parties jockeying to retain or improve their political positions. Despite grand pronouncements from FSIS about halting workplace violence, angry inspectors and enforcement personnel said the agency had known for years what had been going on and had done nothing to stop it. The slayings, they said, were only the most extreme example of chronic physical, verbal and mental abuse suffered by inspectors from the companies they inspect and their own agency's management.

Perhaps understandably, the industry quickly distanced itself from the obviously overwrought sausage-maker. The industry's associations did offer sympathy for the slain inspectors through their newsletters and stressed the need for professionalism. Yet many processors saw Alexander's reaction as a symbol of nitpicking bureaucratic harassment. For some in the industry, overzealous, even corrupt, inspectors run processors ragged with whimsical readings of the laws and regulations. Especially vulnerable are the smaller immigrant and "Mom and Pop" operations that are afraid to take on the government.

The FBI reportedly investigated at least four other copycat threats over the summer. Jokes about the murders sprang up like poison mushrooms. "Oh, we have that there as a joke," laughed a ground beef producer in New York City about an article on the shootings he had taped to his wall. "Those guys" - meaning the inspectors - "can really aggravate you." "I tell my inspectors they're next," laughed another. Not joking was custom slaughterer Hanh Van Tran, who, in July, two weeks after the San Leandro killings, allegedly tried to shoot and run over two compliance officers in Garden Grove, Calif., when they detained his carcasses for mislabeling.

In the end, the San Leandro slayings have proved but a hiccup in the protracted struggle over HACCP, a hot button issue since the protocol was first seriously proposed after the 1993 Jack in the Box E. coli outbreak and arguably the real cause behind eroded inspector-industry relations. Initially promoted as a "replacement" to traditional inspection, FSIS later flip-flopped and made HACCP an "enhancement" on top of the traditional inspection system. The resulting confusion caused deep resentment on the part of field inspectors, who suddenly found themselves aced out of much of their jobs.

Other massagings of the English language have allowed the agency to stay one step ahead of its detractors in the court of public opinion. For years FSIS steadfastly refused to admit that it was allowing companies to "self-inspect," despite the fact that under HACCP plant employees were now doing what had been the inspectors' jobs since passage of the Meat Inspection Act in 1907. Recently, FSIS Administrator Thomas Billy flatly denied a Government Accountability Project report charging that the agency was allowing the passage of dirty meat. Billy pointed to HACCP's reported successes combating foodborne bacteria, a separate issue.

The agency's extended honeymoon may now be over. Only, nine days after San Leandro, the U.S. Court of Appeals laughed at FSIS's attempts at verbal slight-of-hand. "One might as well say that umpires are pitchers because they carefully watch others throw baseballs," scoffed Judge A. Raymond Randolph at Associate Deputy Administrator John McCutcheon's declaration that the government was in fact inspecting every poultry carcass, if only by virtue of being in the same building as the birds.

By any measure, it's been a tough spring, summer, and fall for FSIS - and thus for the inspector-industry relationship. Whether it was the humiliation of Judge Raymond's decision or USDA's loss against Supreme Beef Processors in Dallas or the Inspector General's audit last June that criticized the agency's loss of authority over the industry or numerous press reports about dirty meat being allowed to pass inspection, relations between the three principal characters in the HACCP drama may be more strained than at any time in their history.

In July, the Association of Technical and Supervisory Professionals called for Administrator Billy's resignation, saying Billy had repeatedly brought individuals from outside the agency to senior executive posts at FSIS "who do not have a clue as to how the meat and poultry industry operates." In addition, the association said, Billy "showed his disdain for career employees by failing to make himself available for the memorial services" in San Leandro. A team of top agency brass did attend, as did Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman.

In August, Billy and his lieutenants angrily aborted a consultation in Washington, D.C., with inspectors' union leadership after the collected National Joint Council presidents upbraided him for "lying" about involving them in decision-making, for his apparent lack of sincerity in making needed changes, and for the lack of success of HACCP in general. A Violence in the Workplace committee organized after the San Leandro murders was essentially a sham, charged NJC Chair Delmer Jones. "You're addressing the tragedy in California the same way you addressed the tragedy in Hamlet, N.C., where 35 people got burned up," Jones told Billy. "All we heard from you people for one year, because Congress, news media, and everything was on your rear end, was safety, safety, safety, and you didn't do nothing."

Yet, at hearing held in September, Senator John Kerrey of Nebraska, a big meat state, boldly suggested what Glickman and Billy would not. "Maybe in statute we should abolish this [inspectors] union and rewrite the law to create a real health-oriented organization, because they still are thinking like inspectors," Kerrey said.

Back to top Can These Issues Be Resolved?
The unseen element in all of this is the government's stake in "letting HACCP work." HACCP is the basic building block of an international food standard being developed by the Codex Alimentarius Commission, a United Nations and World Health Organization body, currently chaired, not coincidentally, by FSIS Administrator Billy. Should HACCP become international law, all signatories would be compelled "to accept meat imports from companies where self-inspection has replaced government inspection," former service administrator Rodney Leonard and others wrote in a letter to USDA Secretary Dan Glickman in 1997. Once passed, failure on the part of any country to comply could result in World Trade Organization sanctions, the letter read.

In light of HACCP's evolving role, there is little need for the agency to resolve anything with the inspectors, critics say. The inspectors are the monkey in the middle, chasing between their two bosses in a game being played over their heads. Nor will the constant acrimony likely be solved by mere good will when each one's agenda is so radically at odds.

Bud Hazelkorn is a freelance journalist based in Berkeley, California, U.S.A. He reported on the Santos Linguisa Factory tragedy for the Pacific News Service.

© 1999-2000 Watt Publishing Co, All Rights Reserved, from MeatNews.com, a Meat and Poultry Online partner.

For more information…
• Click here for a list of articles referencing HIMP, the HACCP-based Inspection Models Project.

• For a list of articles referencing HACCP (or Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point) inspection systems: Click here.

• For a list of articles referencing FSIS: Click here.

• Click here for the National Joint Council of Food Inspector Locals.