A meat inspection program which the US Department of Agriculture hopes to approve for all domestic pork plants has frequently allowed the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants where the approach has already been instituted.
Under the program, meat production facilities are allowed to have
as much as 20 percent speedier processing lines, and companies
can employ more of their own inspectors while having fewer
in-house USDA inspectors.
These protocols are already allowed in five US hog plants as part
of a pilot program that began in 1997 with the intention of
allowing all pork plants nationwide to institute the program
after a USDA safety analysis.
However, three of the pilot plants were found to be among the 10
worst offenders for domestic health and safety infractions,
including failure to detect and remove fecal matter from meat,
according to a report this spring by the USDA inspector general.
Government inspectors eventually caught the violations at the end
of processing lines, though federal procedure considers such late
detection to be a violation of standards.
While nationwide consent for the pilot program is on hold,
foreign red meat exporters to the US are allowed to follow
similar procedures. In the last two years, plants following the
new inspection guidelines in Canada and Australia were cited for
a host of problems with exported meat, according to The
Washington Post.
The five US plants were allowed in 1997 to begin the Hazard
Analysis and Critical Control Point-based Inspection Models
Project (HIMP), which granted the use of private inspectors and
accelerated processing lines. The move was considered a
significant victory for meat production companies looking to
maximize profit and reduce regulatory strictures on inspection
procedure. The government saw the new guidelines as potentially
cost-saving for consumers.
The USDA said in 1997 that it would monitor the new guidelines at
the five plants in expectation of offering them nationwide. But
by this past spring, the USDA still had not evaluated the pilot
program for its stated safety and health goals. The agency says
it will have a complete report in March and hopes to make the
case for 608 hog plants in the US.
Yet the USDA inspector general’s office has found that three of
the five plants in the pilot program have garnered scores of
health and safety violations. Auditors did not identify the five
plants, nor could it determine whether the infractions could be
attributed to the inspection system, since no official study had
been done.
The auditors did say, however, that safety records at the three
most troubled pilot plants are worse than those at hundreds of
other US pork plants that use the traditional system, with slower
processing lines and more government inspectors.
A separate report by the Government Accountability Office said
the pilot program was too small to “provide reasonable
assurance that any conclusions can apply more broadly to the
universe of 608 hog plants in the United States” and that
comparable data from pilot plants and traditional plants was
needed to evaluate the new procedures.
Six USDA inspectors working in the pilot plants raised health
concerns in interviews with The Washington Post. Several of them
said that company and government workers are verbally abused and
threatened for slowing down the faster processing lines or for
complaining too much about safety procedures.
“We are no longer in charge of safety,” said one
inspector. “That’s what the public needs to know.”
Several trade partners have received permission from the US to
use HIMP-related safety and health procedures at processing
plants in recent years. USDA auditors visited plants in Canada,
Australia and New Zealand, and determined their systems were
similar to the US pilot program.
Three beef plants in Canada that export to the US were allowed to
use new guidelines starting in 2006. Since then, there have been
occasional cases of tainted meat being rejected at the US border.
The worst case of contaminated beef occurred around one year ago,
leading to 18 reports of illness in Canada, although none were
reported in the US.
In September 2012, a Canadian plant owned by XL Foods Inc. had to
recall 8.8 million pounds of beef and beef products contaminated
with E. coli. Around 2.5 million pounds of the tainted product
went to the US market. A Canadian government-appointed
independent review panel found the pace of the inspection system
to be a contributing factor to the health infractions.
“If the line speed is too fast, workers would have little time
to examine and trim off visible contamination from
carcasses,” the panel wrote in a report. “Staff would also
have insufficient time to properly sterilize their knives between
trimmings.”
The panel also stated that the speed of processing lines made
sanitizing carcasses for E. coli more difficult.
“If sprays are not properly applied to the carcass, they could
serve to spread the contamination across a wider area,” the
report said.
The Canadian plant is now owned by JBS USA, the largest beef
exporter in North America.
Meanwhile, USDA officials have called Australia “the worst
performer of all exporting countries.” After allowing the
pilot program in Australian facilities in 2008, USDA officials
began to take notice of tainted products at port-of-entry
inspections.
In early 2012, USDA inspectors rejected “multiple”
shipments of contaminated Australian meat, according to internal
documents.
Australian food safety officials announced improved inspection
protocols last summer, yet the USDA protested again in December
saying the new guidelines weren’t “effective across the
system.” The US agency said that meat with fecal matter and
partly digested food from multiple plants using the new
inspection system had arrived at US ports. Contaminated products
included beef, mutton, and goat meat.
Since New Zealand plants were granted permission to use the new
guidelines in 2011, no meat produced by the plants has been
rejected at US ports due to contamination.