SASKATOON – The stage has been set for a lawsuit involving a bizarre bordertown tale of alleged tampered meat samples and accusations that one meat inspector has a vendetta against the Canadian meat industry.
On one side is Bill Lehman, a U.S. meat inspector who sees himself as a protector of the American public against truckloads of substandard meat entering the country from Canada.
On the other side is Mike Tisdale, the co-owner of a privately run meat inspection border station in Sweetgrass, Mont., south of Lethbridge. Tisdale said if Lehman is allowed to return to his post at his facility it will drive Tisdale out of business.
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Late last month, documents filed in Federal District Court in Great Falls, Mont., painted a picture of Lehman’s attitudes toward Canadians and their meat inspection.
In signed statements accompanying the lawsuit, Sweetgrass plant manager John Buckley said he recalled a time when Lehman told a Canadian truck driver picking up a rejected load of meat: “Here’s another –load of meat for you Canadians to eat.”
Also in the documents were copies of letters from employees that said Lehman continually referred to Canadians as stupid and dumb.
In a copy of a letter to Mike Espy, who was U.S. secretary of agriculture at the time, Tisdale said employees of his plant believed “meat had been tampered with during the time it was under Mr. Lehman’s control.”
The documents stated Lehman first gained publicity in 1990 when he began criticizing the Canadian meat inspection system in the U.S. media after the signing of the Canada-United States Free Trade Agreement. Lehman alleged that since the agreement, routine meat inspection had slowed to a trickle.
According to an Alberta Report article attached to the documents, in testimony before congress last spring Lehman said he rejected 30 percent of all the Canadian meat he checked over six months last year, above the 1.6 percent turned back country-wide.
Inadequate inspection
The documents also said he told a House of Representatives subcommittee that Canadian meat inspection procedures were inadequate: “Canada is shipping meat into the United States that is not inspected, that perhaps even a record is not being kept up, and no mark of inspection is being placed on it.”
In his opinion Canada was dumping “substandard meat in this country,” Lehman was quoted as saying.
In 1994, Lehman appeared on a nationally televised broadcast of ABC TV’s Turning Point. In that program he repeated charges Canadian meat was being uninspected before reaching the United States.
Transcripts from the program included in the document quoted Lehman as saying: “I don’t believe people truly have any idea how many truckloads of meat enter the U.S. from Canada that are not inspected in any form or fashion other than a cursory look into the rear of the trailer. You’re going to sleep at night thinking that I’m standing between you and adulterated or contaminated meat, when I’m not doing it.”
In an affidavit included in the package, former Lakeside Packer’s president Garnet Altwasser said that on a September 1993 tour of the inspection facilities, Lehman told him Canadian meat packing plants were a bunch of “shithouses.”
Altwasser said Lehman told him “Lakeside was never going to access the U.S. market because we could not overcome the inspection process. The message I got from this was that Lehman was going to put Lakeside out of business in the U.S. market.”
It was shortly afterward that Altwasser wrote to Tisdale telling him Lakeside’s plant in Brooks, Alta., the inspection station’s largest customer, would no longer use their inspection services while Lehman was on duty, said a letter included in court documents.
Inspected by USDA
In 1988, the United States department of agriculture changed its policy to require that meat imports be inspected at the port of entry. USDA encouraged private businesses to establish facilities at ports of entry where this inspection could be performed by USDA personnel.
Once the documents are checked on a load of meat, the inspector checks 10 to 15 percent of loads randomly selected by a computer.
If the inspector finds a defect, the carcasses are returned to the plant of origin. USDA will then make a full reinspection of the next 15 loads from that plant coming across the border.
Lehman was posted at the station when it opened in 1988. In August 1992, Lehman was removed temporarily. He later left his job in September 1993. In January, the Food Safety and Inspection Service, an agency of USDA, notified the owners that Lehman would be reassigned in January of 1994.
It was then Tisdale wrote to U.S. agriculture secretary Mike Espy saying if Lehman was reassigned, Lakeside would reroute its meat to another border crossing.
After a federal government investigation, FSIS said it had taken “appropriate actions” and that Lehman would be reassigned to the station in January 1995. However, at present Lehman has not returned to work at the inspection station.
Court officials say he has until Feb. 17 to file a response in the case.
