Source: MEATINGPLACE, 9/4/13


The National Chicken Council (NCC) is defending its safety record in response to a new push by a coalition of civil rights groups to alter USDA’s proposed poultry rule changes that include faster processing line speeds.

The groups, led by the Southern Poverty Law Center, on Tuesday petitioned the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the USDA to jointly set line speed limits in poultry and meat processing plants.

They argue OSHA should be involved in setting limits based on concerns over worker safety.

NCC, in a statement emailed to Meatingplace, said the industry’s injury and illness rate has decreased 75 percent over the past 20 years. It provided figures that show the chicken industry injury rate of 5.8 per 100 full-time workers compares favorably with a rate of 6.4 for all animal slaughter workers and 5.6 for the entire food manufacturing sector.

“We take the health and safety of workforce very seriously,” NCC said. Industry efforts to improve worker safety were documented in a report released earlier this year, Ergonomics in the Poultry Industry – A Review of 25 Years of Industry Efforts, that refuted earlier safety claims by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others.

The American Meat Institute (AMI) also defended the safety record of meat and poultry companies over the past two decades and said assertions that the industry is “notoriously dangerous” can’t be supported by federal data. It is not in meat companies’ best interests to operate at speeds that cannot produce high-quality product, AMI said.

“'Miscuts' are very expensive, and injuries to workers are precisely what we work to avoid every day,” AMI Senior Director of Worker Safety J. Dan McCausland said in a statement.

When considering line speeds, factors such as the size of the crew on the line must be considered, AMI continued. For example, a line operating at a particular speed with a crew of three may be moving too quickly, but that speed may be safe with two additional crew members, AMI said.  

USDA’s proposed rule change would increase poultry processing line speeds to a maximum of 175 birds per minute from the current 140-bird maximum.

The civil rights groups’ latest effort to influence the outcome of USDA’s proposed rule to modernize poultry slaughter inspections comes as the Government Accountability Office on Wednesday released a report suggesting the information USDA relied on for its proposal had certain limitations.

“As a result, stakeholders did not have complete and accurate information to inform their comments on the proposed rule and its potential impacts,” the GAO report said.

NCC, in a separate statement responding to the GAO report, said it agreed with the agency’s conclusions that that strengths of the modernized poultry inspection system include giving plants responsibility and flexibility for ensuring food safety and quality and allowing USDA inspectors to focus more on food safety activities.

Ashley Peterson, NCC vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs, said USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has already updated the analyses used to support the proposed rule, and the results continue to support moving forward with it. FSIS will present the updated analyses with it issues the final rule, she noted.

For more stories, go to www.meatingplace.com.