EX-USDA OFFICIAL URGES CHICKEN HANDLING LABELS
  A former U.S. Agriculture Department
  official urged the department to require that packages of
  chicken be labeled with handling and cooking instructions to
  protect the public from disease.
      Carol Tucker Foreman, President of Foreman and Heidepriem
  and a former assistant secretary of agriculture for food and
  consumer services, told a House Agriculture subcommittee, "every
  hour of every day, 22 Americans become victims of chicken
  contaminated with salmonella."
      She said every two and a half weeks, an American dies of
  salmonellosis or complications arising from it and the
  incidence of poisoning from poultry has increased steadily over
  the past several years.
      Foreman said USDA should follow a National Academy of
  Sciences recommendation to label chicken packages to remind
  consumers of preparation procedures necessary to avoid illness.
      She urged USDA to require that birds be washed thoroughly
  before they are defeathered and that defeathering machines be
  cleaned several times a day, that birds be condemned if their
  intestines are punctured or there is visible fecal
  contamination and that chiller water be changed more often.
      Kenneth Blaylock, President of the American Federation of
  Government Employees, said a poultry industry recommendation to
  move away from the current bird-by-bird inspection could prove
  "disastrous." He said a strengthened bird-by-bird inspection with
  slower line speeds was the foundation upon which new inspection
  techniques should be overlaid.