Feathers ruffled over proposed chicken inspection changes?
On Monday, a reader named Ann left this public comment on my Facebook page:
“Lindsey, I was horrified at reading in Sunday, 8/19 Roanoke Times of the FDA proposing changes in the inspection of chickens as they are being prepared for our consumption. I would expect more time for inspections instead of less and also, certainly not inspections by employees of the poultry producers, but unbiased inspectors. I may have to become vegetarian after all.
Could you find where we could complain about this and start a public outcry?”
Ann is referring to this story, which was written by a reporter with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and which ran in our paper. The proposed new changes were also reported in several other papers, so some of you might already be familiar with the gist of it. For those who are not, here are some basics as they were worded in the AJC story:
The new proposals would:
“- Use workers in chicken and turkey plants to replace all but one federal inspector on the conveyor belt, where bad birds are removed from the production line. (Currently, chicken plants have as many as four federal inspectors on their lines.)
- Let those plants decide how much training their workers receive in identifying diseased or defected birds.
- Enable plants to speed up their slaughter lines so that the sole federal inspector, stationed at the end of the line, would be required to view up to 175 birds per minute. The maximum speed now is 140 per minute, but that workload is divided among four inspectors so that it averages out at 35 per minute for each inspector.
- Let poultry plants decide what dangerous bacteria they test carcasses for and how often they test, and no longer require plants to test for E. coli.”
The USDA says the new procedure would save money for both the poultry industry (at least $265 million per year) and taxpayers (more than $90 million over three years). The Food Safety Inspection Service says the new rules would free up inspectors to spend more time working to combat more serious food safety risks.
But some food safety groups are up in arms over the proposal. They say these are shortcuts that could put Americans more at risk for foodborne illness. Read the story (or this one in the New York Times,or this Huffington Post op-ed piece written by the administrator of the FSIS, which says there’s a lot of misinformation out there about the proposal, or any other story you can find by Googling this topic) in order to decide how YOU feel about these proposed changes.
If you are still disturbed by them and oppose them, you can go to the Food & Water Watch website and send a letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Here is a link to the page where the form letter is located (you can customize the letter).
Food & Water Watch spokesman Rich Bindell also suggested that concerned parties contact their members of Congress to tell them the rule should be killed. Don’t know how to contact your representative? Here’s a page that you may wish to bookmark for future reference.
August 23, 2012 - 5:30 AM
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While the Food & Water Watch petition form is still open, I think the FSIS/USDA is officially closed to comments on this proposal. I noticed when I filled it out that there was a note saying they hoped to submit the petition by May 25. After doing a little digging, I found the proposal was initially open to public comments until April 26, but then extended until May 29. I haven’t found anything about the comment period being further extended. There’s more information here: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2012/04/26/2012-10111/modernization-of-poultry-slaughter-inspection
Hmmm… Bindell originally thought the comment period was closed, but then he sent me that link I shared and said it was still active. Let me check on that, Laura. I didn’t fill it out myself.
Contacting your representatives would still be a good step, I would think.
Laura, the Food & Water Watch is going to update that action (they said within about the next hour) so that link should still work later this morning. Thanks so much for pointing that out.
Thanks for following up with this, Lindsey.
I was a little horrified at reading it. Plant workers are in charge of pulling bad birds. Will they? I am not hopeful.
Yeah, the food production industry has such a stellar record of self reporting violations, all the way back to over a century ago in the Chicago Stockyards.
Sounds like the lobbyists really spent their money well once again.
Government saves $30 million a year? 30 million is nothing in government’s way of spending. I think they could look elsewhere to cut spending. This sounds dangerous. How much money will they have to spend tracing an e-coli outbreak?
What could be more vital to a nation’s defense than the safety of its food supply? Short-sighted stupidity.
Hi Lindsey,
Full disclosure – I’m with the National Chicken Council in D.C. and we’ve been following this proposal closely. I wanted to clear up a few misconceptions and offer a few more additions to your post.
The purpose of the proposed rule is to redeploy federal resources in order to better protect public health. Some USDA inspectors, not all, will be shifted from looking for cosmetic defects, like bumps, bruises or feathers, to looking for things you can’t see that have a real impact on public health, like Salmonella and Campylobacter. But federal inspectors will still inspect every bird and will continue to have final say under the new rule.
Chicken companies have every incentive to run an effective quality assurance program to prevent blemished products from entering grocery stores and restaurants.
Your readers should also know that this proposal has been tested in 20 chicken plants and five turkey plants for 13 years. It is not something that was cooked up over night. The plants participating in the pilot project since 1999 have an excellent food safety record, on par or better than those under traditional inspection.
Further, should this proposal go through, the new inspection system would be voluntary.
It is the goal and primary focus of the chicken industry and USDA alike to provide consumers with safe, high quality and wholesome chicken. This proposed rule does not change that goal.
I’d be happy to discuss this with you or your readers in more detail should you wish. I can be reached at tsuper@chickenusa.org. Thanks for the opp to provide comment.
Eat chicken!
@ Tom Super, thank you so much for stopping by! I know my readers appreciate the additional perspective.
Anybody have questions for Mr. Super?
Tom, with all due respect. I haven’t eaten a bite of USDA inspected chicken in over twenty years, and I am now even less likely to eat them. It is quite obvious that the food supply in this country is even more vulnerable now than it was 50 years ago. Primarily, It is less safe because there are a few large corporations which have 95% control over the food supply and the agencies designed to protect it. Most of our food is corn, soy, wheat and cheap factory animals that contain more antibiotics than iron.
What a great food system this country has created. Can you pass the dinosaur-shaped chicken-like thingies?