Source: Lisa M. Keefe, MEATINGPLACE, 8/5/11

For USDA employees, fiscal 2011 hasn’t been a financial picnic, as recession-plagued tax revenues squeeze operating budgets. But fiscal 2012 is going to be worse for a variety of economic and political reasons, said two agency administrators in separate presentations to the National Meat Association’s summer conference.

Food Safety and Inspection Service Administrator Al Almanza described an agency-wide review underway to determine what FSIS’s core missions are. “If we’re going to reduce the deficit we can’t continue to do the things we’ve been doing,” Almanza said. “We have to take out all the 'nice’ things we’ve been doing and figure out what our core mission is.”

Almanza said he has submitted an overall reorganization plan to USDA Secretary Vilsack, although he declined to discuss the details of what his proposal contained.

By way of some examples, however, he said if a program routinely identifies a small percentage of violators, a question would be whether the costs of that program are worth carrying in light of the incrementally small improvements in food safety that they represent, he said.

Elsewhere, FSIS’s 15 district offices create a “lack of uniformity” in procedures from one coast to another, so consolidating those offices is another option being explored.

“I believe everything is on the table,” Almanza said.

Craig Morris, deputy administrator for the Agricultural Marketing Service, also told conference participants to expect cuts in that department.

“This is an economic situation unlike anything in my federal career,” he said.

He noted that about half of his overall budget is paid out of user fees and another half from appropriations. Morris said his agency’s focus is on optimizing the efficiencies of the programs that are based on user fees and preparing for cuts in those that are funded by appropriations.

“COOL (country of origin labeling) and other programs will go through extremely tight times; we’re in a much more austere environment than ever before,” he said.

Some major steps already have been taken, including merging three separate commodity procurement branches into one, and consolidating the Grading and Verification Division. Along the way, the agency has become “a smaller office.” An office that might have employed 50 two years ago may be operating with closer to 20 now.

“We want to get ahead of the curve and manage the change rather than have it managed for us,” Morris said.

To that end, in accordance with the Congressional debt-limit compromise, industry executives are watching to see who is named to the so-called congressional “super committee” charged with coming up with deficit-reduction strategies. If the committee of 12 lacks a strong agriculture advocate, the effect on USDA and on the contents of the next farm bill could be major.