Germ warfare. (On The Web www.cspinet.org).

The federal government spends about $1 billion a year inspecting meat, poultry, and other foods. While the thousands of inspectors who poke, sniff, and test millions of carcasses every day undoubtedly help, the government estimates that some 70 million people a year still suffer food-borne illnesses. Five thousand die.

In recent years--in part due to the efforts of the Center for Science in the Public Interest (Nutrition Action's publisher) and others--the government has forced slaughterhouses to start cleaning up their operations. Rates of Salmonella contamination in meat and poultry are down 25 to 50 percent since the mid-1990s. That's impressive when you consider that meatpacking is an inherently dirty business: There's manure on some animals when they arrive at slaughterhouses, and there's filth released when intestines sometimes rupture.

But if government regulators focus only on the slaughterhouse, they're ignoring a fundamental principle of public health: If you stop germs from getting into the system, you don't have to work as hard to get them' out.

Germs don't just materialize in livestock on the day of slaughter. Often, the animals have been colonized months before and hundreds of miles away, sometimes because of "modern" farming methods, which involve huge "factory farms":

* For the last few months of their lives, most cattle live in crowded lots, where they are fed corn and other grains. Yet researchers at Cornell University have found that grain-based diets promote the growth of deadly E. coli O157:H7 bacteria.

* Because molting (loss of feathers) increases egg production, farmers "force" molting by starving their layer hens. That weakens the hens enough to allow any Salmonella in their ovaries to contaminate their eggs.

* Modern chicken houses can contain upwards of 25,000 birds. The houses are frequently not cleaned well between flocks. That allows bacteria--including strains that are resistant to antibiotics--to flourish and to infect the next flock that occupies the chicken house.

Industries are working on exotic technologies to reduce contamination. Huge and expensive irradiation facilities are being used to kill bacteria in ground beef. Chicken carcasses are washed with chlorinated water and other chemicals. Beef carcasses are sanitized in steam-pasteurization chambers.

But farmers could eliminate much of the problem without those high-tech solutions. They could reduce crowding, so that infections don't spread like wildfire. They could thoroughly clean the houses, feed troughs, and other facilities at reasonable intervals. They could stop forced molting. They could switch cattle from corn to a grass-based diet the week before they're slaughtered. They could wash the animals thoroughly before they're killed.

And they could adopt some of the other low-tech ways researchers are coming up with to cut down on pathogens in livestock. For instance, feeding harmless bacteria to animals may prevent harmful bacteria from growing.

Developing effective preventive measures could greatly reduce the risk of food poisoning, improve the animals' welfare, and preserve the effectiveness of antibiotics for use in humans.

The cost of meat and poultry might rise slightly, but I suspect that consumers would be delighted to pay a few cents more for safer food.

Michael F. Jacobson, Ph.D.
Executive Director
Center for Science in the Public Interest