Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 1/31/18


USDA’s Foods Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has rejected the National Chicken Council’s (NCC) petition asking for young chicken plants to be exempt from the 140-birds-per-minute maximum line speed under the New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS).

Acting Deputy Undersecretary for Food Safety Carmen Rottenberg explained in a letter the reasons for rejecting the petition, about which the agency received 100,000 comments. Broadly, she said current regulations allow for certain waivers. She also noted that NCC was asking for no line speed limit, while agency data gathered during the HACCP-Based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) pilot study suggests only that inspectors can conduct line inspections effectively up to 175 birds per minute.

“The petition did not include data to demonstrate that inspectors can conduct an effective carcass-by-carcass inspection at line speeds faster than those authorized under HIMP,” Rottenberg wrote.

Currently, 20 young chicken plants that participated in HIMP pilot study are still allowed to operate at line speeds up to 175 birds per minute. These establishments had demonstrated that they could maintain process control at the line speeds authorized under HIMP during the years they participated in the pilot.

Further, FSIS announced previously that if an establishment operating under the waiver went out of business or decided to give up its waiver, FSIS would select another establishment to take its place, limiting this waiver to 20 young chicken establishments. The preamble to the NPIS final rule made clear that FSIS would continue to consider line speeds at which establishments are capable of consistently producing safe, wholesome, and unadulterated product and are meeting pathogen reduction and other performance standards.  

Rottenberg told the NCC in the letter rejecting their petition that FSIS now has more than a year of documented process control history for many young chicken establishments operating under NPIS.

“Therefore, in the near future, FSIS intends to make available criteria that it will use to consider waiver requests from young chicken establishments, in addition to the current 20, to operate at line speeds up to 175 bpm,” she wrote.

The criteria will include, among other things, a demonstrated history of process control and establishment configuration and procedures that provide for effective carcass-by-carcass inspection at high line speeds. FSIS expects to grant a limited number of additional waivers under the criteria.

NCC response
"While we are disappointed about the denial of the petition, NCC is encouraged that there will be a viable path forward in the near future for those plants operating under NPIS to petition the agency for increased line speeds, if they maintain a record of process control,” NCC President Mike Brown said in a statement. “That was the original intent of the petition and we look forward to working with the agency and our members on the soon to be released criteria to apply for such a request."

Opposition remains
“While we welcome this victory for the workers across the country, we also sound a note of caution about the potential for individual plants to ask to raise the speed in their operations,” says Minor Sinclair, director of Oxfam’s U.S. Domestic Program. “Workers report that they’re already working at breakneck speed — slicing and cutting 40 or 50 birds per minute. They’re exhausted and hurting, and they worry about the problems they see in the food supply.”

Debbie Berkowitz, senior fellow for worker safety and health with the National Employment Law Project and a former senior official with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration said the petition, had it been granted, “would have endangered the health of consumers and the safety of hundreds of thousands of workers.”

She also warned, “Poultry workers already face harsh and dangerous conditions, and there is evidence that the new poultry inspection system is not delivering on the promised public health benefit to consumers. NELP calls on the USDA to follow the law and announce any new system for individual waivers in the Federal Register for public notice and comment. Further, the USDA must be open and transparent and publish on its website every request they receive for a waiver of line speeds and make them available for public notice and comment.”

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