FDA is urged to ban carbon-monoxide-treated meat

WASHINGTON — Picture two steaks on a grocer's shelf, each hermetically sealed in clear plastic wrap. One is bright pink, rimmed with a crescent of pearly white fat. The other is brown, its fat the color of a smoker's teeth.

Which do you reach for?

The meat industry knows the answer, which is why it has quietly begun to spike meat packages with carbon monoxide.

The gas, harmless to health at the levels being used, gives meat a bright pink color that lasts weeks. The hope is that it will save the industry much of the $1 billion it says it loses annually from having to discount or discard meat that is reasonably fresh and perfectly safe but no longer pretty.

But the growing use of carbon monoxide as a "pigment fixative" is alarming consumer advocates and others who say it deceives shoppers who depend on color to help them avoid spoiled meat. Those critics are challenging the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the meat industry, saying the agency violated its own rules by allowing the practice without a formal evaluation of its impact on consumer safety.

"This meat stays red and stays red and stays red," said Don Berdahl, vice president and laboratory director at Kalsec Foods in Kalamazoo, Mich., a maker of natural food extracts that has petitioned the FDA to ban the practice.

If nothing else, Berdahl and others say, carbon-monoxide-treated meat should be labeled so consumers will know not to trust their eyes.

Meat-industry officials deny their foes' claim that carbon monoxide is a "colorant" — a category that would require a full FDA review — saying it simply helps meat retain its naturally red color.

Besides, industry representatives say, color is a poor indicator of freshness because meat turns brown from exposure to oxygen long before it goes bad.

"When a product reaches the point of spoilage, there will be other signs that will be evidenced — for example odor, slime formation and a bulging package — so the product will not smell or look right," said Ann Boeckman, a lawyer with the Washington law firm Hogan & Hartson. It represents Precept Foods, which helped pioneer the technology.

Advocates of the process say consumers should pay attention to "sell or freeze by" dates as the best indicator of freshness.

No one knows how much carbon-monoxide-treated meat is being sold; the companies involved are privately held or keep that information secret.

"We feel it's a huge consumer right-to-know issue," said Donna Rosenbaum of Safe Tables Our Priority, an advocacy group in Burlington, Vt. Last month, the Burlington group and the Consumer Federation of America wrote to the FDA in support of a ban.

The FDA has given three companies the green light to use carbon monoxide, designating the approach "generally recognized as safe," a regulatory category that allows a company to proceed with its plans without public review or formal agency approval. The companies are Pactiv Corp., Precept Foods and Tyson Foods.

Consumer advocates note that the European Union has banned the use of carbon monoxide as a color stabilizer in meat. A December 2001 report from the European Commission's Scientific Committee on Food concluded that the gas (whose chemical abbreviation is "CO") did not pose a risk as long as food was kept cold enough during storage and transport to prevent microbial growth. But should the meat become inadvertently warmer at some point, it warned, "the presence of CO may mask visual evidence of spoilage."

How is it, Berdahl and others ask, that something can be deemed "generally recognized as safe" when there is enough scientific debate over the issue to warrant a ban in Europe?

"I just picture a refrigerator truck breaking down in Arizona and sitting there for an afternoon. Then, 'Hey, we got it repaired and nobody knows the difference,' and there you go," Berdahl said.

Opponents also say the FDA was wrong to consider carbon monoxide a color fixative rather than a color additive — a crucial decision because additives must pass a rigorous FDA review.

George Pauli, associate director for science and policy in the FDA's Office of Food Additive Safety, defended the agency's decisions. "In general, statute says you cannot use [substances] in a deceptive manner, and the question is what is a deceptive manner," Pauli said.

He emphasized that the agency has never formally approved use of the gas, but rather looked at information provided by the companies and decided not to object.

"We said, 'Thank you, you've helped inform us,' " Pauli said.

That is what has opponents most upset.

"The FDA should not have accepted carbon monoxide in meat without doing its own independent evaluation of the safety implications," Elizabeth Campbell, former head of the FDA's office of food labeling, wrote in a statement released in November.

Bucky Gwartney, an official of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, chafes at the idea that the industry is trying to fool consumers.

"It would be ludicrous for a company to adopt a process that would undermine what we all want, which is to assure that food is safe," Gwartney said.