Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 10/19/18


USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said in its fall 2018 statement of regulatory priorities that the agency intends to finalize a proposal published Feb. 1 to implement a voluntary New Swine Inspection System (NSIS) for pork slaughter plants.

Cousin of the New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS), which also resulted from the government’s HACCP-based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) in participating poultry and pork plants, NSIS will focus FSIS inspectors’ attention more on offline inspection activities that the agency contends are more directly related to food safety.

FSIS said it has received more 83,500 comments on the NSIS proposal. Many of the comments requested that the agency withdraw the proposal to remove limits on line speeds, arguing — as opponents did in the development of NPIS — that high line speeds have a negative impact on animal welfare and worker safety.

FSIS said it will analyze and address the comments in the final rule.

USDA finalized NPIS in 2014, and line speeds in poultry plants remain an issue of topic of hot debate. The agency has denied the chicken industry’s petition last year to remove any line speed limits, but recently laid out criteria it said it will consider when poultry slaughter plants request a waiver allowing them to run their slaughter lines at a speed faster than 140 birds per minute.

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