CSPI Faults Mexican Meat Imports

February 15, 2001

The Center for Science in the Public Interest leans on "official internal reports" to claim that about one-third of the Mexican meat slaughtering and processing plants inspected by USDA were so ill-equipped, dirty, or otherwise in violation of USDA safety rules that they were barred from exporting to the U.S. However, senior USDA officials rejected the recommendation of USDA's inspectors to audit immediately "Mexico's entire meat inspection system."

"President Bush should urge (Mexico) President Fox to improve Mexico's meat inspection system to assure consumers that the safety of their food is not being sacrificed on the altar of international trade," said Benjamin Cohen, CSPI senior staff attorney.

CSPI claims that of 37 Mexican plants authorized to export to the U.S., 10 were inspected by the USDA in the spring of 1999. Because USDA found serious deficiencies, it inspected 15 additional plants that November. Eight of those 25 plants — 32% — flunked USDA's inspections because of such violations as fecal contamination, not having hand soap at the workers' hand-washing facilities, meat being stored under insanitary conditions, failure to sanitize contaminated equipment, and failure to conduct bacteria tests on a random basis. The USDA inspectors also found serious deficiencies in the Mexican laboratories that are supposed to test the meat for deadly Salmonella bacteria.

The USDA inspectors also said that prior to the second audit the Mexican government had assured the USDA that it had corrected the problems revealed by the first audit. However, the second set of USDA inspectors concluded that, in fact, Mexico had failed to correct three of the six major deficiencies in its inspection system.

A USDA audit team "strongly" recommended that a "follow-up audit of Mexico's entire meat inspection system be organized and carried out, within three months, to ensure that these serious issues are being satisfactorily resolved." But instead of conducting an audit, USDA again accepted the Mexican government's assurances that the problems had been corrected.

USDA announced on Dec.14, 1999, that it had decided that Mexico has a meat-inspection system that is "equivalent" to USDA's standards for domestic plants. "Had USDA concluded that the Mexican system was not `equivalent' to ours, Mexico could not export meat to the United States," according to CSPI.

In letters sent to the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, CSPI urged Congress to order the USDA either to audit all the plants in a particular country or to stop imports from the unaudited plants when its audits reveal a significant proportion of unsafe meat and poultry plants.

In fiscal year 1999 the United States imported 11 million pounds of meat from Mexico.