USDA: Original Media Report on Proposed Pork Industry Regulation is False

FSM: This week, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA FSIS) released a response to The Washington Post’s April 3rd article about changes coming to the pork industry.

Below is USDA’s own accounting of every claim made by The Washington Post that the agency deems false.

“Pork industry soon will have more power over meat inspections”
FALSE: First, by law only federal inspectors do meat inspections. Also by law, only federal inspectors can apply the USDA mark of inspection, which consumers rely on to know their meat is safe. To imply otherwise is sloppy, inaccurate, and reckless.

“The Trump administration plans to shift much of the power and responsibility for food safety inspections in hog plants to the pork industry as early as May…”
FALSE: Again, only federal inspectors do meat inspections.

Much has changed since the 1967 Wholesome Meat Act, including the old “poke and sniff” methods that were developed using an outdated understanding of risk and disease. With modernized hog slaughter, FSIS is moving inspection closer to an approach supported by current food safety science. In fact, FSIS conducted a 20-year pilot called the HACCP-Based Inspection Model Project (HIMP) in five market hog establishments. The pilot has been ongoing throughout four presidential administrations producing the safest food supply in the world. Modernizing inspection through science is clearly in the best interest of public health.

“The Trump administration plans to shift…”
FALSE: This is deliberately misleading. The plans and data gathering for this proposal started in the early 1990s under the Clinton administration. Since that time, dozens of food safety leaders regardless of administration or party have attempted to modernize inspection. This modernized approach to inspection was proposed and finalized for poultry under the Obama administration in 2014.

“…cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees”
FALSE: FSIS is not reducing the total number of federal inspectors by 40 percent and is not replacing our inspection personnel with plant employees that will conduct inspections. FSIS will make inspection staff determinations on a case-by-case basis to ensure that 100% inspection and other critical public health activities are carried out.

Should the proposed rule become final, federal inspectors won’t be performing quality assurance tasks. Instead, they would be able to focus on critically important activities.  keep reading

h/t Groucho Marxist.