For the first time in more than 50 years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has revamped the national poultry inspection standards in a move that it hopes will reduce the incidence of poultry-borne diseases by 5,000 every year.
Following more than two years of wrangling among the government, the poultry industry and food safety advocacy groups, the department's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has finally revealed a new set of rules that will govern the inspection process in the country's poultry manufacturing facilities. Prominent among the new rules is the reduction of government inspectors and the shift in focus from checking for quality to safety.
Currently, federal laws require government inspectors to stand in one point in the processing line to check for visual defects, such as the presence of bruises or fecal matter. This method is a not very effective means to ensure that the birds are safe for eating since pathogens such as salmonella and campylobacter, the most common causes of poultry-borne diseases, are invisible to the naked eye.
The USDA touts its New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS) as an "updated science-based inspection system that positions food safety inspectors throughout facilities in a smarter way." Under this new system, instead of scouting out bird carcasses hung in hooks as they fly through the production line, inspectors will be trained to take more birds off the line for closer inspection, check the plant's other facilities to ensure cleanliness and observe live birds for signs of disease or mistreatment.
"FSIS will now require that all poultry companies take measures to prevent Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination, rather than addressing contamination after it occurs," says the USDA in a statement. "Also for the first time ever, all poultry facilities will be required to perform their own microbiological testing at two points in their production process to show that they are controlling Salmonella and Campylobacter."
The department's new rules exclude an industry-submitted proposal to increase the limit on poultry production from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute, which has undoubtedly garnered disappointment from the industry, although most industry players laud the department's decision to reduce government interference in poultry inspection.
Mike Brown, president of the National Chicken Council, cites global precedents in countries such as Belgium, Canada, Brazil and Argentina, where the production cap for broiler plants is 200 birds per minute or more.
"It is extremely unfortunate and disappointing that politics have trumped sound science, 15 years of food and worker safety data and a successful pilot program with plants operating at 175 birds per minute," he says.
Meanwhile, food safety advocacy groups have expressed their frustration over the USDA's new rules, saying that allowing poultry companies to police themselves is "a gift from the Obama administration" and will undermine consumer health and worker safety.
"This is not a meaningful victory because there are not accompanying worker safety regulations to deal with the musculoskeletal disorders and other work-related injuries that both the plant workers and USDA inspectors suffer every day working in the poultry slaughter plants," says Wenonah Hauter, executive director of the Food & Water Watch.
Hauter adds that the reduction of inspectors means one inspector at every production line will have the impossible task of inspecting 2.33 birds per second.
