Source: Michael Fielding, MEATINGPLACE, 10/19/15

Pork items are back on the menu across the nation’s federal prisons — just one week after the Bureau of Prisons announced that it had cut pork items from the system’s 2016 fiscal year budget. The new fiscal year began Oct. 1.

This, according to the Washington Post report, which reported Friday that the government had reversed its decision in the wake of a letter written by an Iowa senator pressuring the bureau to reconsider.

“The pork industry is responsible for 547,800 jobs, which creates $22.3 billion in personal incomes and contributes $39 billion to the gross domestic product,” Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) wrote in a letter Thursday to Bureau of Prisons Director Charles E. Samuels.

“The United States is the world’s largest exporter of pork, and the third-largest producer of pork,” wrote Grassley, who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the federal prison system. He added that removal of pork items would “have consequences on the livelihoods of American citizens who work in the pork industry.”

Prison spokesman Edmond Ross told the Post that the agency made the decision in light of an annual surveys of food preferences among the nearly 206,000 inmates. Pork chops and sausages had been removed two years ago, leaving inmates with pork roast.

“To corroborate the validity of the claim that prisoners indicated a lack of interest in pork products, I am requesting copies of the prisoner surveys and responses that were used to support the determination to no longer serve pork in federal prisons,” added Grassley, who also requested survey responses “dating back as far as prisoners may have indicated their dislike for pork products. … Please provide any economic evaluations the Bureau of Prisons has relied on that detail the cost of pork as compared to beef, chicken, and non-meat products such as tofu and soy products.”

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