990734 USDA Will Help Small Meat Plants Launch HACCP

Washington - USDA said it was working with small meat and poultry plants to help them adopt a system of food safety checkpoints on Jan. 1.

Beginning next year, some 5700 small plants -- each with fewer than ten employees or less than $2.5 million in annual sales -- must adopt a system of critical control points to prevent contamination with E. coli, salmonella and other foodborne diseases.

Similar programs began in 1998 at larger U.S. meat plants as part of the USDA's attempt to shift more responsibility for food safety onto plant managers and new science-based procedures.

“Our focus for the past several years has been implementation,” said Margaret Glavin, associate administrator of USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service. The smallest plants “are often isolated and also tend to be the group of plants with the least knowledge and least resources.”

The USDA, the National Academy of Sciences and the General Accounting Office have separately recommended that the USDA redeploy some inspectors away from the old “poke and sniff” system at slaughter plants to monitor food safety in ways that will better protect consumers.

The federal union representing some 6,000 USDA meat inspectors sued the USDA last year to force the department to continue its carcass-by-carcass examinations.

Consumer groups generally support the USDA's shift to give more responsibility to plants for overseeing food safety. But they also want the USDA to identify how much physical handling of carcasses by inspectors is necessary to safeguard the food supply.

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