July 18, 2000
		Meat With Tumors Okay for Consumption, Says the USDA In a move that has made our recent state of meat inspection look almost competent by comparison, the USDA has decided to impose new rules that would reclassify animal carcasses with cancers, tumors and open sores as safe for human consumption. Carcasses with the appearance of tumors and sores would be considered simply aesthetically marred, and would be available for consumption. Meat inspector, Delmar Jones, who also happens to be president of the National Joint Council of Meat Inspection Locals, said that he was so disgusted by the federal lowering of standards that he doesn't buy most meat anymore because he doesn't believe that it is safe. Jones has been a meat inspector for 41 years. Although the USDA said that tumors and lesions should be removed by meat cutters before it goes to market, Jones said that production lines in slaughterhouses are moving so quickly that it would be impossible to catch all the affected carcasses. "When I started inspecting, inspectors were looking at 13 birds a minute, then 40, and now it's 91 birds a minute with three inspectors. You cannot do your job with 91 birds a minute." Among the diseases now approved by the agency as non-hazardous are cancer, a pneumonia of chickens called airsacculitis, glandular swellings or lymohomas, sores, infectious arthritis and tumors.