USDANEWS VOLUME 57 NO.2 -MARCH 1998

Keep Those Calls & Letters Coming!
Because of HACCP, the phones are ringing off the hook in Omaha. And that's just fine with the Food Safety and Inspection Service staffers who are handling those calls.

"HACCP" stands for "Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points." "It's a modernization of FSIS's food safety program for fresh and processed meat and poultry," explained Paul Thompson, director of FSIS's Technical Service Center in Omaha, Neb. "The HACCP approach to inspection relies on science-based controls and microbiological testing, rather than on the previous way of relying primarily on an inspector's senses of sight, touch, and smell."

"HACCP is designed to help our meat and poultry inspectors focus on preventing food safety problems in the first place," he emphasized, "rather than merely catching problems after they occur."

Seated in front of a wall chart which tracks daily phone activity, FSIS staff officer Tom Winn ponders a response as he listens to a question on the HACCP Hotline.
--Photo by Richard Benda

FSIS created the Technical Service Center--as part of the agency's reorganization in 1996--to facilitate the implementation of HACCP. The Nov.-Dec. 1996 issue of the USDA News carried a story about that reorganization.

On January 26, the 312 largest meat and poultry plants in the country began operating under this new inspection system. "Those 312 plants account for about 75 percent of the meat and poultry slaughtered in the U.S.," said Center Deputy Director Duwayne Metz. "The HACCP approach is to be phased in, over the next two years, in the remaining 8,700-plus federally-inspected and state-inspected slaughter and processing plants around the country."

To help in the implementation of HACCP, the Center established a "HACCP Hotline," which is staffed by FSIS specialists in Omaha. "Our employees," noted Bob Hess, an FSIS staff officer at the Center, "are responding to telephone calls, electronic mail, letters, and fax inquiries from both the 'regulated industry' and from our own inspection personnel, located at meat and poultry plants across the U.S."

He added that the Center is compiling a database of the questions and answers, and staffers are periodically analyzing the database, looking for trends and/or unusual situations.

Barbara Masters, an FSIS team leader and coordinator of hotline operations, said that staffers have received over 3,900 calls since the HACCP Hotline--1-800-233-3935--began operating on January 20. Those staffers operate the hotline from 6 am to 6 pm, Monday to Friday.

She said that the most frequently asked questions include "Where in the process do inspectors check to make sure that there is not fecal contamination on carcasses?" and "What records should the plant maintain, and where should they be kept?"

Any absolutely bizarre questions?

"We feel--and we've been telling our employees--that no question is a dumb question," Masters underscored.

--Edie Kelly

"Sealing the Deal" for Fuzzy & Sparky
They needed a place to live. Two male harbor seals in Saco, Maine, were looking toward an uncertain future after the aquarium where they lived went bankrupt.

"As part of our routine inspections, we inspect the Maine Aquarium--so I had been there several times and had visited Fuzzy and Sparky," recounted Ron Zaidlicz, a veterinary medical officer and animal care inspector with the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, based in Lee, N.H. "I wanted to make sure they were receiving proper care."

"But I just couldn't stop thinking about what was going to happen next."

What happened next was action. Once the Maine Aquarium canceled its license last November, Zaidlicz's responsibility as an inspector ended. But, rather than abandoning the fate of the two seals, he began making phone calls.

"I made several calls to my APHIS colleagues for assistance, and also called several facilities," he said. "I knew what the seals needed, and I didn't want to see them separated."

"They'd been together for pretty much their whole lives--each 13 years old--and I thought it would be best if I could find someone who would take them both."

Part of the reason, he said, was that both seals had bilateral cataracts--so they were very dependent on each other.

With the cooperation of the U.S. Department of Commerce's National Marine Mammal Fisheries Service, plus the owners and caretakers of the two seals, Zaidlicz made an initial phone call to officials at the Detroit Zoo. Five months later, that's where Fuzzy and Sparky found a home.

"Detroit Zoo officials made us a promise that they'd take care of these seals--and now I feel those two are in the best environment of their lives."

So, any trips planned to visit them in the future?

"I've been considering a trip to Milwaukee later this spring," he confirmed, "and I just might mosey on through the Detroit Zoo, along the way."

--Jim Rogers

High-Tech in Hawaii
Natural Resources Conservation Service employees in Hawaii are busy tracing lines from trees to bushes to rocks.

Huh?! What's all that about?! It's all part of a high-tech way to develop conservation plans--and NRCS in Hawaii is at the forefront of implementing this innovation in their field offices.

"One of the main tasks of NRCS is to provide private landowners and users with technical information for use in sound conservation planning to protect and improve our land and water resources," noted Pam Mills-Packo, an NRCS resource conservationist with the agency's field office in Aiea, Hawaii. "One of the best ways to accomplish this is to help our customers develop conservation plans."

"How do you like that clarity in this digitized image of your ranch?" observes NRCS Geospatial Information System operator Barbara Fossum (left), as she and local rancher Bob Cherry study a computerized image of his property.
--Photo by Jolene Lau

"But now we have the capability to use satellite imagery and/or aerial photography--and to digitize directly on that imagery--to lend more precision to those plans." She explained that digitizing on a photo image essentially means to trace lines on the computer screen which is displaying that image.

Specifically, according to Jim Reisen, an NRCS computer specialist based in Aiea, NRCS would scan a photo into the computer or acquire digital images from other sources. But whether it's a photo or a digital image, the key is that it would reflect a customer's property. Then the customer, working with an NRCS specialist at a field office, would display that digitized image onto the computer screen.

"Then," he added, "using specialized computer software, a customer--sitting side-by-side with our conservation planners--uses the computer to actually trace marks, or boundaries, directly onto the image."

"For instance," Mills-Packo explained, "the customer may wish to map out fences, directly onto the digitized image of his/her property. This approach will help them know how much material they'll need to order for the fencing."

Jason Shitanishi, the Farm Service Agency's county executive director for Honolulu County, Hawaii, noted that NRCS customers Bob Cherry and Mike Knott recently received a $50,000 NRCS Environmental Quality Incentives Program (EQIP) cost-share contract to improve grazing management systems, reduce soil erosion, and improve water quality on their 4,300-acre ranch located in the West Oahu Soil & Water Conservation District in Waialua, Hawaii.

"They," said Mills-Packo, "may be one of the first land cooperators in the nation to begin digitizing their own conservation plan."

--Jolene Lau

New Corn Means Less Pollution
Here's still another contribution to cleaner water, compliments of a scientist with the Agricultural Research Service.

"This particular development reduces the potential for water pollution from animal manure," explained Victor Raboy, an ARS geneticist based at the agency's National Small Grains Germplasm Research Facility in Aberdeen, Idaho.

That's because he has modified the traditional corn plant. Specifically, he developed a kernel of corn that holds less phytic acid. Because the phytic acid is lower, when animals with one stomach--such as hogs and chickens--eat the modified corn as feed, they are better able to absorb the phosphorus contained in the corn.

"Accordingly, the more phosphorus they absorb, the less they'll excrete in their manure," Raboy pointed out. "That will mean less excreted, unused phosphorus that could cause an environmental problem by polluting lakes and streams."

Animals with multiple stomachs, such as cattle, have natural enzymes that already break down phytic acid from the corn.

"This corn may prove a better feed for chicken and hogs--and possibly a better food for people, too," concludes ARS's Victor Raboy, as he examines a low-phytic-acid corn plant.
--Photo by Keith Weller

Farmers apply animal waste to croplands as fertilizer--enough each year to fill railroad boxcars that would circle the earth, according to estimates provided by the University of Kentucky. Rain and other runoff can carry phosphorus-laden soil to nearby lakes and streams.

"Algae thrive on the phosphorus," Raboy advised, "using up the water's oxygen and choking out other aquatic life." In fact, excess phosphorus has been suspected as one possible culprit in the outbreaks of fish-killing algae found in the tributaries of the Chesapeake Bay.

But Raboy's low-phytic-acid corn enables one-stomached animals to extract the grain's phosphorus--thereby meeting their nutritional needs and thus excreting less of the nutrient. "This could also reduce the need for farmers to give their animals phosphorus supplements," he said.

Raboy added that humans rarely have a phosphorus deficiency, because meats, milk, and nuts are rich in forms of the nutrient that people can use. "But developing countries that depend on grain-based diets may find nutritional benefits in food applications from our research," he said.

According to Richard Parry, ARS's assistant administrator for technology transfer, after ARS developed and patented this new low-phytic-acid corn, in February it awarded the first license for using this technology to Pioneer Hi-Bred International, which is based in Johnston, Iowa and is a major producer of hybrid seed corn.

"Pioneer and other companies are breeding the trait into elite corn plants, and may release commercial hybrids sometime in 2000," he said. ¤

--Kathryn Barry Stelljes

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