WASHINGTON, May 17, 2013 –
A little more than a month after Senate Appropriations Committee members helped
USDA to avoid furloughing
meat inspectors, the issue of inspection has reared its head in that committee
once again. Yesterday, the Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development and
Food and Drug Administration questioned USDA officials on their proposed fiscal
2014 budget, and much of the attention fell to Under Secretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen and her Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) efforts
to modernize poultry inspection.
Hagen says the service is
hoping to use “regulatory tools (that) correspond with current knowledge," which
will allow her employees to “tackle modern food safety challenges.” Hagen
points out that the current poultry inspection system has its genesis in the
1950s, a decade with a dramatically different food system than the one USDA
must oversee today.
In January of 2012, FSIS
issued a proposed rule that the agency says would permit “FSIS to conduct more
food safety related offline inspection activities, will allow for better use of
FSIS inspection resources, and will lead to industry innovations in operations
and processing.” FSIS would pass many quality assurance tasks over to private
companies themselves, and inspectors would not look at carcasses until they
were nearly ready to come off the line. Additionally, government inspectors
would inspect a faster line (from 140 birds per minute to 175) and no longer
examine the internal organs of poultry carcasses.
Hagen said yesterday that the new process
could prevent “5,200 illnesses per year by changing where inspectors focused
and what they’re performing.” She says FSIS has collected sufficient data to
implement a modernization project through a pilot program, which has been in
place in 20 poultry plants since 1998.
Still, senators remained
skeptical of the effort. If the data points toward modernization, Subcommittee
Chairman Mark Pryor, D-Ark., pointed out, “Why is it not already final?” He
pushed Hagen to accelerate the process of implementation.
But Hagen says FSIS is
combing through “thousands of comments” pertaining to the proposed rule, noting
her agency’s “obligation to consider and address every single one of those
options.”
Hagen says FSIS is also
working with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), amidst
claims that faster speeds could hurt poultry plant workers.
There is one element of
the plan that the money-tight Appropriations Committee should appreciate –
Hagen says the proposal would save the government $90 million per year.
Last week, Secretary
Vilsack testified before the same subcommittee that the rule would be
implemented “very soon.” He said the plan will “allow the
poultry industry to continue to be profitable, and allow [USDA] to save some
money as well.”
#30
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