Day 241 - 26 Apr 96 - Page 57
1 Once foreign beef has been inspected by USDA officials at
2 the port of entry, the meat enters the general US market of
3 beef products and is no longer required to be labelled
4 'imported'. As a result, although some fast-food
5 restaurants admit that they use imported beef, others can
6 claim to use only US domestic beef. The fact that imported
7 beef becomes 'domestic' beef once passed by USDA Inspectors
8 makes it difficult to disprove such statements.
9
10 As a USDA official in Washington DC explained, 'Once we
11 have inspected a shipment of imported beef we have no way
12 of knowing what products it goes into, where it goes and
13 what people call it after we approve it is out of our
14 hands'. In fact, fast-food franchises may not know the
15 original source of all the beef they sell. 'Sometimes',
16 says Miami based USDA Inspector Dick Abelet, 'A beef
17 shipment changes owners two or three times before it even
18 leaves the warehouse'. But US imports of Central American
19 beef did introduce more than cheap beef into American
20 diets. They also bring in some undesirable ingredients
21 such as toxic residues of chlorinated hydrocarbons found in
22 DDT and other agricultural pesticides. 'In recent years',
23 states US State Department Researcher Douglas Shane, 'the
24 quantity of Latin America beef refused by the United States
25 Inspectors -- quantity of beef refused by United States
26 Inspectors has more than doubled'."
27
28 It includes Guatemala in the next sentence. Reading the
29 last paragraph before the heading, "The Search for
30 Solutions":
31
32 "Regardless of such problems, all indications point to
33 increased US use of imported beef during the coming years.
34 A few statistics: 45 per cent of the beef Americans eat is
35 consumed in restaurants in fast-food chains. By 1990 half
36 of the nation's food budget will be spent on meals outside
37 the home. The US already supports more than 67,000
38 fast-food restaurants and spends more than $29 billion per
39 year on fast-food."
40
41 The last paragraph on this page is on the right-hand side
42 that I would like to read. Just under half way down there
43 is a sentence in the middle of that paragraph starting
44 "Importing beef":
45
46 "Importing beef to compete with US produced beef is said
47 to have held down the price of hamburgers by 5 cents per
48 pound. In fact, some US officials have claimed that beef
49 imports have done more to hold down food price inflation
50 than any other single government initiative."
51
52 Then, finally, on the last page, the first sentence in the
53 last paragraph talks about various changes that are needed
54 to save the situation:
55
56 "All of these changes will take time and that time will
57 take its toll on Central America's remaining rainforests.
58 Each year that current patterns persist means another 4,000
59 square kilometres of tropical rainforest eradicated."
60
