Food Processing Plants

Federal investigators were ordered Friday to investigate five meatpacking plants accused of processing beef contaminated with dirt, hair, animal wastes and other foreign material. Agriculture Secretary Edward R. Madigan said he was launching the review after a television broadcast Thursday by ABC's "Prime Time Live" raised questions about inspection procedures at the plants and allegations of contamination.

Facing low demand, tougher competition and a profit squeeze, the nation's beef-packing industry is slicing production and preparing for what some analysts say could be long-term problems. Beef packing's Big Three companies--IBP, ConAgra and Cargill --have reduced operating hours or temporarily shut plants in recent weeks. Among the plants affected: IBP's beef plants in Lexington, Dakota City and West Point; ConAgra's Monfort Inc.

A half century ago, Cordelia Knott spooned her boysenberry preserves into glass jars and sold them to eager customers. Today, giant machines carry on the process at the Knott's Berry Farm Foods plant in Placentia. The plant employs between 200 and 400 workers depending on the season. Some of the berries are grown on Knott's own farm--in Riverbank, Calif., not the theme park in Buena Park. Others are bought from growers.

Steve Edney was there 40 years ago when America's tuna canning industry came of age on Terminal Island. And in its own way, he says, the gritty industrial heart of Los Angeles Harbor was every bit as important as New York's Ellis Island to the immigrants who found work in the canneries. Every day for decades, he remembers, thousands of cannery workers would come to work on the ferries from San Pedro or by car across the Henry Ford Bridge.

Owners of a Hamlet, N.C., chicken processing plant where 25 people died in a September fire were fined $808,150, a state record, for locking doors and violating other safety codes meant to protect workers. State Labor Commissioner John Brooks said the fine sends a message to employers that the state will not tolerate similar conditions in other plants. Criminal charges are also a possibility, he said.

Outraged by conditions at the North Carolina poultry processing plant where 25 workers died in a fire last week, labor rights activists have begun a push to overhaul industry safety standards, but they face very tough obstacles. After the fire at the Imperial Food Products plant in Hamlet, N.C.

Occidental Petroleum Corp., in yet another swift step to shed ancillary businesses, said Wednesday that it will sell its 51% interest in IBP Inc., the nation's largest producer of beef and pork products. The move--an expected part of a restructuring announced in January--will reduce the energy company's debt by $760 million, achieving in the first nine months most of its goal of erasing $3 billion in debt over two years, according to Oxy Chairman Ray R. Irani.

When it comes to being folksy and unpretentious, the Bridgford brothers are the Bartles and Jaymes of frozen bread dough. While most corporate executives pad around on plush carpeting in a walnut-paneled suite, the president and chairman of Bridgford Foods Corp. shout at each other across the linoleum floor of the cluttered office they share. There are no secretaries to guard the window-walled inner sanctum nestled in a corner of the expansive factory floor.

Geo. A. Hormel Co. views all of its customers in the same light: They're busy people, on the go; they need good food fast and don't have time to cook. Hormel Top Shelf meals, the company says, are a perfect solution--whether you're a working mother or a soldier stationed in Saudi Arabia. So when Uncle Sam called in November, Hormel answered--with 23 million entrees ranging from beef Oriental to glazed breast of chicken, all for $44.6 million.