Perspective

Agriculture, food production, and meat and poultry processing have not been featured much, if at all, in this year's lively presidential campaign. Nothing about food safety or the meat trade was mentioned in any of the three broadcast debates between President George W. Bush and the Democratic candidate, John W. Kerry. USDA policies have not been lightning rods for he-said/I-did speechifying. The candidates' endless visits to the hustings have brought forth no grand pronouncements for new programs to save family farmers, small meat businesses, or increase the price of corn.

But in fact there are differences in meat and trade policy separating the Bush and Kerry agendas, if one looks carefully and thoroughly beneath the mountains of verbiage both candidates have devoted to American foreign policy and domestic economics. Perhaps most notably, Kerry has said he favors, in general, the country-of-origin labeling proposal of R-CALF, the more or less renegade group of cattlemen who have rode off on their own away from the less protectionist proposals of the mainline National Cattlemen's Beef Association. While most meatpackers would be unhappy with COOL -- virtually all of the industry's trade associations, including the American Meat Institute, National Meat Association, North American Meat Processors association, and other, have lobbied heartily against a mandatory COOL program, Kerry's endorsement of it isn't much more than typical campaign-year politics.

R-CALF has some influence in rural Washington state, a crucial swing state in this year's election. Moreover, Kerry's base support among Democrats in the so-called “blue-state” corridors, along the East Coast and West Coast, have shown support in general for more informative food labeling, such as farm-of-origin organic labels. Bush, meanwhile, didn't need to risk offending the meat industry by endorsing R-CALF's COOL proposal because his support is already overwhelming in other states where R-CALF is an influence, such as Idaho and Wyoming. If his support was weaker there, he'd endorse COOL in a flash, you can bet on it.

More to the direct interest of meatpackers and processors, what can the industry expect from a second-term Bush administration or a new Kerry administration at the USDA agency most concerned with the meat business, the Food Safety and Inspection Service? Bush, over the past four years, has already shown us the direction he'd give FSIS: Steady, continued emphasis on HACCP, cautious assessment of new proposals, no controversial shakeups at the agency, and an interest in listening to the industry's point of view as presented by the mainstream industry trade associations. Whether Dr. Barbara Masters, at present acting FSIS administrator, will lose the “acting” part of her title is anyone‘s guess (She got the FSIS post after the previous administrator, Dr. Garry McKee, was sent packing to USDA Siberia following the general failure of his effort to turn FSIS into a public-health agency.). Some FSIS observers believe deputy administrator Linda Swacina is the real power at the agency anyway. And in any case it's not likely that the Bush administration's assistant USDA secretary for food safety, Dr. Elsa Murano, who is much liked by the industry, will hang around for a second term. She's been offered the dean's job at Texas A&M's School of Agriculture, and last month she saw the completion of her pet project at USDA, the establishment of the Food Institute of the Americas in Florida.

In a Kerry administration's FSIS, an emphasis on HACCP is highly likely to continue -- remember, the protocol was made law during the Clinton years and was championed by Clinton's FSIS administrator, the otherwise controversial Michael Taylor. In fact, the Clinton administration's record is probably the best guide for what to expect from a Kerry administration. The old industry hands who now populate the political posts at USDA would be ushered out, to be replaced by more consumer-oriented bureaucrats. It's not inconceivable that Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Centers for Science in the Public Interest, who is the industry's best-informed critic (and sometimes it's most effective broker of compromise between industry and consumer agendas), would take over the job now held by Murano. It is also not inconceivable that Kerry would want to put his own person at the top of FSIS -- the administrator's job became subject to political appointment back in the Reagan years (unfortunately, I think). Who would that person be? There's been no hint from the Kerry campaign, so the field is wide open for guessing. My own guess is that it would be someone from either the consumer field -- perhaps another attorney, like Taylor -- or someone from outside Washington altogether, an academic perhaps.

But I don't think a Kerry administration would tinker much with the present policies and direction of FSIS, even if something newsworthy happened -- another confirmed bovine spongiform encephalopathy case in the United States, for example, or another deadly, devastating E. coli or Listeria outbreak. In terms of agricultural activism, a Kerry administration is likely to be more concerned with limiting the spread of genetically modified organisms, which would play well to the Democratic base, than with changing policy on foodborne pathogens.

If Bush wins a second term, will his Secretary of Agriculture, Ann Veneman, stay for a second ride? She's given no indication, at least publicly, one way or the other. She has not been a particularly effective Secretary, I think it's fair to comment. The trade impasse with Japan over BSE testing dragged on far too long (it was broken only last weekend, nearly 10 months after USDA's announcement that a BSE-infected animal had been confirmed in Washington state), and the Canadian border, a crucial line in North American beef trade, remains impervious to cattle after a BSE-infected animal was confirmed in Alberta in May 2003. As a result, Canadian cattle numbers are swelling like a termite colony, and beef packinghouses in the northern-tier U.S. states are starved for animals to process. These failures may be enough to cause Bush to want better from a Secretary in a second term, should he win next week's election.

Kerry''s choice for secretary, should he win the election, would depend on how the election goes. If one of the agriculture-oriented swing states goes for Kerry -- Washington state, say, or Minnesota or Wisconsin or even Pennsylvania – it's probable that he will offer as a reward the Secretary's job to someone from one of those states. It's not likely that a Kerry USDA Secretary would come from California, as does Veneman, because Kerry doesn't need to reward the state; it will go his way on November 2 in any case. It's also not likely he'll give the job to someone from his solidly Democratic home state of Massachusetts -- which would be unfortunate, I think, because that would rule out the bright, innovative Gus Schumacher, the former Massachusetts commissioner of agriculture and erstwhile Clinton administration USDA executive, though Gus might return to USDA in some other capacity besides Secretary.

Whichever candidate wins next week, it's important to remember than neither Bush nor Kerry have given any indication they would significantly change, in any way, USDA's and FSIS's present courses. Under either Bush or Kerry, agricultural subsidies (“marketing orders”) will for the most part continue unchanged, despite the unhappiness they bring to some of our trading partners. There will be no change in emphasis on HACCP or on BSE testing. If a consumer-activist joins USDA at the top level in a Kerry administration, there will be speeches and proposals made about the benefit of greater pathogen testing at meat plants, but whether increased testing becomes law is a different matter, especially if Republicans maintain a majority in Congress. If Bush wins, the mainstream meat industry will continue to have an ear in the White House and in the ““Bird Cage” -- the USDA Secretary's office in the Department's Administration Building in Washington.

Meat prices will go up if Bush is elected, and they will go down, too. Same as if Kerry is elected. Whatever happens, the industry will continue in its effort to make its product safer, to better market it, and to find profitable niches. That's the important thing.

Steve Bjerklie, Editor