Washington - Federal meat inspectors threatened to sue the U.S. Agriculture Department to stop it from reassigning inspectors from large plants to smaller ones, a move they claim could jeopardize food safety.
The meat and poultry inspectors, who are members of the American Federation of Government Employees, contend the USDA is relying too much on an "honor system” that gives companies more responsibility to monitor food safety.
(INSIGHTS NOTE: The program does NOT rely at all on an “honor” system. The system requires members of the industry to take total “responsibility” for a food safety system that insures oversight, microbial testing, and finished product testing. Inspectors have been using an 80-year-old system that was designed long before bacteriological testing was possible.)
The USDA has spent the past year phasing in a HACCP program that requires big meat and poultry plants to establish key control points in processing plants, and to check each step for compliance. As part of the change, federal inspectors spend more time reviewing plant paperwork than their traditional role of checking each carcass for disease.
USDA scientists maintain the changes are necessary because microscopic contamination has become a bigger risk to food.
On January 25, USDA expands these new food safety procedures from the largest U.S. slaughter plants to include medium-sized ones.
"The USDA wants to redeploy inspectors from larger plants to smaller plants,” said Arthur Hughes, head of the northeast region of the federal food inspectors union.
"Further action is imminent,” Hughes said after a briefing on Capitol Hill. "We're looking at some kind of legal action, possibly in seven to 10 days.”
In April 1998, the union and its 6,000 inspectors sued the USDA to force the department to continue its carcass-by-carcass examinations. No rulings have been issued in the lawsuit.
Some 80 meat inspectors were in Washington to lobby lawmakers for additional USDA funding to expand the inspection force.
Without more money, inspectors will have to spend virtually all their time checking company paperwork instead of examining animals for disease, Hughes said.
"I think we're designed to fade out of the picture and make infrequent visits to the line,” Hughes said.
The Clinton administration plans to ask for nearly $107 million in extra funding for food safety programs in fiscal 2000, with more than half earmarked for the USDA. But the request will have to compete with farm groups demanding more USDA money to offset depressed commodity prices and exports.
Investigators with the General Accounting Office recommended a few months ago that Congress modify a century-old law that requires USDA inspectors to poke, sniff and peer at every animal carcass moving through a slaughterhouse. The GAO said that the $271 million spent annually for inspections could be better used on other food safety programs.
The labor-intensive checks of more than eight billion U.S. birds and cattle mean that inspectors typically spend about two seconds examining each carcass.
Consumer groups have supported the USDA's shift to give more responsibility to plants for overseeing food safety. But they want the USDA to also identify how much physical handling of carcasses is necessary to safeguard the food supply.
The federal government has estimated that as many as 81 million Americans are sickened by different kinds of food poisoning each year, resulting in up to 9000 deaths.
Meat Industry Insights News Service
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Phone: 631-757-4010
Fax: 631-757-4060
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