In the first panel, a man named Alfred Almanza testified from the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). He began by explaining FSIS:
FSIS is the inspection agency within the U.S. Department of Agriculture with a focus on public health. It is responsible for ensuring that the Nation's commercial supply of meat, poultry, and processed egg products is safe, secure, wholesome, and accurately labeled and packaged, whether those products are domestic or imported. We administer and enforce the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspection Act, the Egg Products Inspection Act, portions of the Agricultural Marketing Act, the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act, and the regulations that implement these laws.
Next, he explained the scope of the USDA's inspections:
The high volume and the high-risk nature of the products that FSIS inspects demand an in-plant inspection presence, which is not only required by law, but is necessary to protect consumers. For this reason, the agency employs over 9,500 people, including around 7,800 full-time in-plant and other front-line personnel protecting the public health in approximately 6,200 federally-regulated establishments nationwide. Our statutes require us to be present for all slaughter operations and we inspect each processing establishment once per shift per day.
In other words, every single USDA-inspected slaughterhouse has a USDA inspector there, present, at every moment that the plant is operational. If the inspectors leave, the plant cannot operate (a bargaining tactic currently used by the USDA as a last resort when trying to pressure companies to voluntarily recall tainted products). If you buy any meat at a grocery store or a restaurant, it was definitely slaughtered at a USDA-inspected plant. The only time you might buy meat that was NOT slaughtered at a USDA-inspected plant is if you buy it directly from a farmer.
Almanza notes that FSIS employs other people in addition to the inspectors mentioned above. These include lab techs and investigators. He says, "Program investigators conduct surveillance, investigations, and other oversight activities at food warehouses, distribution centers, retail stores, and other businesses operating in commerce that store, handle, distribute, transport, and sell meat, poultry, and processed egg products to the consuming public."
In 2000, FSIS changed up its practices a bit. Since the publication of The Jungle in 1906, inspectors had been using a method that activists derided by calling it "poke and sniff." You poke and sniff the cow and if it doesn't look sick, then it's OK to go into the human food supply. Clearly this method (and yes, I'm oversimplifying it) was developed before quite a bit of modern science was discovered.
The change in 2000 was a move to a system called HACCP - Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (or, if you're not a fan of it, Have a Cup of Coffee and Pray). This system was developed to ensure food safety on NASA missions and some clever people realized that if it worked to make sure food is safe in space, why don't we give it a try here on earth? So in 2000, it became required at all meat and poultry plants. Almanza said:
Plants are responsible for identifying the hazards in the products they produce and determining how to minimize contamination at each step of their process. Our responsibility is to verify that plants are following their own food safety or HACCP plans.
The problem here is that it gives an awful lot of control to the plants. In the case of the PCA plant that was infested with rodents and cockroaches, their HACCP plan was absolutely piss poor and the FDA never called them on it. Obviously that's the FDA and here we're talking about the USDA, but it goes to show how mistakes can be made even using a modern system like HACCP.
In addition to HACCP, Almanza noted that in late 2001, the USDA began carrying out intensive "food safety assessments" (FSAs). He said, "FSIS has committed to conducting routine FSAs in every plant every 4 years. Additional FSAs will be conducted as needed, for example, following positive pathogen sample results or products implicated in forborne illness outbreaks."
But what about regular testing for pathogens? He said, "In 2008, FSIS personnel tested about 21,300 ready-to-eat product and environmental samples using risk-based criteria for Listeria and approximately 49,000 raw product samples for E. coli O157:H7 in ground beef and Salmonella in raw meat and poultry." That sounds like a lot, but how much is it really? Well, he also said that "In fiscal year (FY) 2008, FSIS personnel inspected about 50 billion pounds of livestock carcasses, about 59 billion pounds of poultry carcasses, and about 4.3 billion pounds of processed egg products. Additionally, FSIS personnel inspected 3.3 billion pounds of imported meat and poultry products at our borders."
So there's 50 BILLION pounds of meat and 59 BILLION pounds of poultry, and the USDA is testing a few tens of thousands of them? That's Not Good. Just to put things in perspective, according to Fast Food Nation, after Jack in the Box had its E. coli outbreak, they began requiring suppliers to test ground beef for pathogens EVERY FIFTEEN MINUTES. This is where I'd like to see some improvement in our food safety system. Additionally, I'd like to see the government require slaughterhouses to slow down their line speeds as that is clearly a factor in food safety as well as worker safety and animal welfare problems.
Next, Almanza speaks for a bit about making use of data. I don't think much needs to be said on that, other than that it's a good idea. If we have thousands or millions of data points about food production and food safety, we should certainly analyze them to find out where the biggest risks and problems occur so that we can improve them.
What about imports? The U.S. verifies that any country wishing to export to the U.S. has an inspection system that is at least equivalent to ours, and then they audit it annually. When imports get to the U.S., FSIS inspects random samples to "verify the effectiveness of the foreign inspection system." A great question here is: what do other countries do? What percentage of foods do we inspect? What percentage of imported foods do other countries inspect? And what are their outcomes compared to ours?
When food safety problems DO occur, Almanza explained how the USDA works with the FDA and the CDC to deal with them. He said that the "last weapon of FSIS" are recalls and adds:
I cannot stress enough that, even though recalls are voluntary actions, they are the result of active oversight and intervention by our Agency. Moreover, we are open to any ideas that will strengthen our food safety system recall process.
So what needs to be done? That's the last area that Almanza covers. He says:
The President and the Secretary have laid a challenge before us, and we need to engage in the dialogue now opened to take a look at the risk posed by different food products, and the performance of the establishments that manufacture those food products, for the entire food supply. We also need to ask hard questions about what level of inspection is appropriate for different kinds of foods, what roles are appropriate for the different agencies involved in food safety, and if a uniform approach on import safety is needed. The President has established a Food Safety Working Group to conduct a thorough review of food safety systems.
It was this statement here that generated all of the news headlines I found about his testimony at the hearing. Each article basically said he called for a system to rank the safety risk of each food and plant that makes the food and to inspect them accordingly. According to Meatingplace, Almanza said:
"Mindful of our finite resources, we have to measure and attack risk, hazards or inadequate performance to know where we can best focus our attention," he said in opening remarks. "In order to efficiently and effectively protect the public health, we at FSIS recognize that all food doesn't necessarily carry the same risk, and all plants do not operate the same way."
None of the articles I read remarked on the committee's reactions to his statements, or on any of the Q&A. I will request a transcript of the hearing but it will take several months to receive it before I'll have more information on this. |
