Remember in the mid-1990s when USDA began telling people to wash their cutting boards and utensils after preparing meat and always use a meat thermometer? Because US meat and poultry is so full of pathogens, if you don't kill them they might kill you? That was the beginning of the government's move to pass food safety risks on to customers, and, more distressingly, to meat processors themselves. The move is continuing with new, alarming government efforts to reduce and disempower meat inspectors at slaughter plants and allow private industry to regulate itself.
In 1998, USDA rolled out its pilot HACCP system. The acronym
stood for "Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points" but federal meat
inspectors, industry watchers and food advocates quickly dubbed it "Have a Cup
of Coffee and Pray" because it transferred oversight from the government to the
plant, in shocking, industry-friendly de-regulation. HACCP was supposed to replace meat inspectors' old-fashioned
"poke and sniff" method of visually examining carcasses by
instituting advanced microbiology techniques. But it is also an "honors
system" in which federal inspectors simply ratify that companies arefollowing
their own self-created system . As in
"Trust us."
Last week, a coalition of food and worker safety advocates and allies gathered outside the White House to protest USDA's imminent plan to implement HACCP system-wide now that it has been used at pilot locations. "Instead of trained USDA inspectors, companies will police themselves," says the site of the group that organized the protest, sumofus.org. "Plants will be allowed to speed up production dramatically. Chickens will spend more time soaking in contaminants (including pus and feces!), and poultry plants are compensating by washing them in with chlorine."
The expansion of the HACCP pilot programs, called HIMP
(Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-Based Inspection Models Project)
would cut the number of poultry inspectors while increasing the use of
antimicrobial sprays to control bacteria, charges Daily
Finance. (Some call it "Spray and Pray.") It would reposition
inspectors at the end of the assembly line so they could not stop the hanging of unacceptable birds, only view them as
they go by. It would allow only one side of the bird to be
visualized, say inspectors in sworn affidavits
on a Government
Accountability Project whistleblower web site, a critical omission, because
fecal contamination often does not show on the outside of a carcass. Birds once
considered unacceptable can now end up remaining on the line, only to be dipped
in disinfectants like chlorine to reduce disease risk, say food advocates.
Fecal contamination is not the only risk posed by the new,
laissez-faire system. Under the new HACCP/HIMP rules, bruises, scabs, sores,
blisters, infections and tumors on chickens will no longer be
considered "Other Consumer Protections" (OCPs) and removed.
Already, when half a bird's body is "covered with an inflammatory
process" it may still be "salvaged" for food, says an anonymous
poultry inspector who is against the new system.
It is hard to believe federal meat inspection will be
further relaxed when it is already widely believed to be a farce. The major
chains Red Robin, Applebee's and Outback Steakhouse have been
cited for food poisonin g outbreaks. The salmonella-laden Wright County Egg
and the Peanut Corp. of America, both of which caused disease outbreaks, were
awarded "superior" food ratings by inspectors only months before their
products were recalled . And the
Westland/Hallmark Meat company, which contaminated the School Lunch program and
caused the biggest meat recall in US history, passed 17 separate audits the
same year its products were recalled! Let's loosen the rules?
Of course, the cutbacks are all about money. Under the new
plans, the government spends less because its inspectors' duties are assumed by
the plant workers. The plants, of course, lose less money because their
operations will never be shut down by those pesky inspectors. (USDA stresses
the new HIMP plans are voluntary as if a plant would say, "We refuse to
forfeit out federal inspectors!")
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