Instituting HACCP to the raw meat and poultry industries served to de-regulate it for the big players and hyper-regulate it for the smaller players. Large corporations with financial reserves and persuasive legal staff privatized the food safety function. With inspectors confined to "critical control points, plants were free to increase the speed of their disassembly lines, a profitable practice that unfortunately encourages a lot more feces, pus and other not insignificant unmentionables to ride down the line and out the door, stamped with a purple seal of approval.
While the fake HACCP program made it easier for the large players to gross more and cover up contamination with chemical sprays and irradiation, small players found it substantially more expensive and difficult to conduct business. In its important and informative report "Where's the Local Beef?: Rebuilding Small-Scale Meat Processing Infrastructure Food & Water Watch recommends that the USDA fix the "overarching problems in its inspection programs, including an overemphasis on meat inspectors examining company food safety plans instead of inspecting product. [27] Food & Water Watch had examined the effects of HACCP on small meat slaughter and processing operations and found that the complexities of one-size-fits-all federal regulations was a key reason for business closings.
It's also noted in "Where's the Local Beef? that "when USDA adopted [HACCP], all federally and state-inspected plants, regardless of their size, were required to, as well. Now these plants have to justify their plans with scientific studies and tests. They also have to set up extensive self-monitoring and recordkeeping systems. Because smaller plans often make a greater number of more complex products (such as sausages), they require multiple HACCP plans that also are more extensive. [28] Possibly because they have no leverage when they inspect large processors, agency inspectors "exert more oversight and enforcement action at the smaller grinders and explicitly makes them responsible for changing the food safety practices at the largest plants, which are suppliers of raw material for the small plants. [29] The seal stamped in purple ink on the carcass doesn't mean much anymore.
You Don't Know What You've Got ˜Til It's Gone"
So, just when the country is awaking to the need to relocalize its food sources, we find that many meat processors who would serve this growing market have been forced out of business by vague, onerous and costly regulations imposed under the guise of food safety.
Do we want the same thing to happen to our produce growers? Do we want to hyper-regulate those farmers whose practices do not contribute to the food poisoning problems endemic to industrially produced food products and de-regulate those whose practices poison us? No? But that's what we're being set up for with the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.
Dà jà Vu All Over Again
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
