USDA Proposes New Poultry Inspection System

USDA Proposes New Poultry Inspection System

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced plans to turn over some oversight of poultry plants to producers, a move that it said would save the industry around $250 million a year though cost almost 1,000 government jobs.

Poultry companies would be able to take on visual inspection of chickens and turkeys passing through plants, while the agency would retain oversight of what agriculture secretary Tom Vilsack called “critical” parts of the production process related to food safety.

The oversight of poultry producers gain heightened significance last year when the outbreak of a dangerous form of salmonella at a Cargill Inc. turkey plant last year killed one person and sickened 77 others and led to one of the biggest-evr meat recalls..

The new format announced by the USDA drew criticism from some consumer groups, who said the effort to “privatize” food inspection ran counter to the findings of a pilot program that has seen producers take on more tasks.

Food & Water Watch said there was no evidence that replacing government inspectors with company checkers had improved safety, and the move “illustrates how much power the meat industry has inside this agency”

Vilsack refuted the charge on a conference call that a just-released peer review study of the pilot scheme showed that it had “proven effective in reducing food contamination”.

The industry savings would come from being able to process birds more quickly in slaughterhouses, though the agency is also conducting a parallel study on the impact of faster production line speeds.

The USDA expects two-thirds of the 300 large poultry processing plants in the U.S. to take up the proposal, a move that Vilsack said would see almost 1,000 inspection jobs “phased out”, with 1,500 other staff freed up to perform more detailed work to improve factory checks.

Agency officials said there were no plans to revamp the oversight of pork and beef plants.

Vilsack, who also dismissed media reports that the Obama administration planned to combine the safety oversight work of the USDA and the Food and Drug Adminstration.