poultry inspection
cmonforton | August 5, 2014When USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack announced last week a new regulation governing the poultry slaughter inspection system, he didn’t just have food safety on his mind. Throughout his press call, Vilsack said things like “we heard concerns about line speed,” and “we listened to concerns about line speed.” Vilsack explained that they abandoned their plan to allow certain poultry processing plants to increase line speeds from 140 birds per minute (bpm) to 175 bpm. As TPH’s Kim Krisberg wrote on Friday, that’s good news for some poultry workers who are already at risk of crippling repetitive motion…
cmonforton | April 10, 2014The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is one of those federal agencies that lies quietly in the background. It’s not one for making waves. It's more like bench scientist who minds her own business in the laboratory. But this week, NIOSH blew its top and created some waves.
In a pointed letter to the head of the USDA’s Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS), NIOSH director John Howard, MD, said that FSIS was misinterpreting a NIOSH report released last month. The report presents the findings of a NIOSH Health Hazard Evaluation (HHE) performed at a Pilgrim’s Pride…
egrossman | November 26, 2013As Americans prepare for the Thanksgiving holiday and the White House gets ready for President Obama to pardon the National Thanksgiving Turkey in a Rose Garden ceremony on Wednesday November 27 that will “reflect upon the time-honored traditions of Thanksgiving,” let us take a moment to reflect upon the welfare of the men and women who process the millions of turkeys on their way to Thanksgiving dinners.
First, according to the US Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), about 220,000 people currently work in the poultry processing industry in the US, at an annual median wage…
cmonforton | August 12, 2013More than 400 inspectors with the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) worked, on average, more than 120 hours each two-week pay period. Those were the findings of the agency's Inspector General in an report issued late last month. Their investigation covered FY 2012, and included field work conducted from November 2012 through February 2013.
FSIS inspectors are assigned to more than 6,000 meat, poultry and egg processing plants in the U.S. They are responsible for ensuring that the product sold by companies to consumers is safe and wholesome. These firms process tens of…
cmonforton | September 24, 2012[Update below, 9/26/2012]
When Secretary of Agricultural Tom Vilsack announced in January the USDA's proposal to modernize the poultry slaughter inspection system, he promised several things. He said the new system would save taxpayers and poultry producers money while improving food safety. (In "The Age of Greed," law professor Rena Steinzor explains on whose backs those savings are borne.) Secretary Vilsack also insisted that USDA inspectors
"will continue to conduct on-line carcass-by-carcass inspection as mandated by law."
That requirement is a long-standing provision of the Poultry…