Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 7/11/14

USDA has finally sent its proposal to update the federal poultry inspection system to the White House Office of Management and Budget for approval after over 15 years as a pilot program and in the face opposition from consumer activist groups, the union that represents federal inspectors and some legislators.

"Today, USDA submitted an updated plan to modernize America's 50-year-old poultry inspection system that will help prevent a significant number of food-borne illnesses each year,” the agency said in a statement sent to Meatingplace on Thursday.

“Although we do not discuss the specifics of a rule under review, the draft rule has been significantly informed by the feedback we received from our stakeholders, as well as from our interagency partners such as the Department of Labor. Specifically, USDA received numerous comments raising worker safety as a potential side effect of the rule, and it has partnered with the federal agencies responsible for worker safety to address these concerns in the draft final rule," according to the statement.
The new rules were first proposed in January 2012 and were based on the HACCP-Based Inspection Models Pilot (HIMP) program that has been in use for several years in over 20 U.S. chicken and turkey plants.  

Under the HIMP model, company employees are responsible for sorting out carcasses that exhibit defects such as bruises or broken bones, rather than USDA inspectors. Instead, a single USDA inspector is stationed at the end of the evisceration line, just before carcasses enter the chiller, to provide a final visual inspection and satisfy the legal requirement for carcass-by-carcass inspection.

Under the initial proposal, some of those inspectors would be reassigned to work off the line conducting checks of the plant’s pathogen reduction program and some inspection jobs would be eliminated through attrition.

While it is not known what has or has not changed in the final version of the rule USDA has now submitted to OMB, as initially proposed, the new rules would have allowed young chicken line speeds to accelerate to 175 birds per minute from the current 140 and would eliminate an estimated 800 unionized federal inspector jobs.

Opponents have argued fewer inspectors and faster line speeds could compromise worker safety and food safety.

USDA officials have said the HIMP model works because shifting some inspectors off the evisceration line allows them to spend more time ensuring the plant’s own safety measures are working. The agency has predicted the new rules would reduce foodborne illnesses related to poultry. 

For over two years, groups opposing the new rules have worked hard to keep the issue in the spotlight. As recently as March, 100 groups sent a joint letter to the White House asking it to reject the proposed rules.

The poultry industry has supported the proposal since its inception.

National Turkey Federation President Joel Brandenberger issued a statement saying while he had not seen the final draft, the initial draft “detailed a modern, sensible approach that will allow food safety inspectors to focus more closely on public health” and that would “allow federal inspectors to shift to prevention-oriented inspection systems and redeploy resources in a manner that better protects the public from foodborne diseases.”

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