Source: POLITICO'S MORNING AGRICULTURE, 6/25/20

USDA’s Inspector General on Wednesday sent lawmakers a long-awaited report (which is expected to be published this week) flagging several shortfalls in how the department formulated a controversial regulation that allows meatpackers to accelerate their pork processing lines to high speeds that labor advocates warn are dangerous for plant workers.

First, the backstory: Early in the rulemaking process, food safety officials acknowledged that any consideration of raising line speeds should account for the impact on worker safety. They also said their “preliminary analysis” showed that plants with faster line speeds under a pilot program actually recorded lower rates of worker injuries than other facilities.

But watchdog groups and independent researchers challenged the assertion, citing flaws in the underlying statistics. Lawmakers cried foul, the IG probe was launched last June and labor groups have since challenged the rule in court. USDA officials maintained that they didn’t rely on the data in question to formulate the final rule, and that worker safety is not under their jurisdiction.

The findings: The IG’s office concluded that USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service didn’t fully adhere to requirements for data quality and transparency, and specifically “did not take adequate steps” to determine whether the worker safety analysis in question was reliable.

In response to the IG report, FSIS Administrator Paul Kiecker said the auditors placed “distorted emphasis” on minor errors and omissions in preliminary rulemaking documents. Kiecker also said the findings that FSIS didn’t comply with data quality guidelines “are false because they are premised on a mistaken assumption about the purpose of the preliminary [worker safety] analysis.”

Connecting the dots: The official report lends more ammo to critics who argue the Trump administration has failed to back up some of its biggest food and farm policy moves with enough scientific analysis. As POLITICO reported earlier this year, data problems have dogged major USDA initiatives including President Donald Trump’s trade bailout, the department’s crackdown on food stamp eligibility and the effort to uproot a pair of research agencies from D.C. to Kansas City.