March 25, 2014
Members of Congress recently asked Secretary of
Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, to suspend the proposed Modernization
of Poultry Inspection Rule, according to an article by Food Safety News
available here. The Washington Post also reported on the
story here.
“While we strongly support modernizing our food safety
system and making it more efficient, modernization should not occur at the expense
of public health, worker safety, or animal welfare,” wrote the group of 68
legislators, led by U.S. Representatives Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), Jim Moran (D-VA),
Louise Slaughter (D-NY), and Bennie Thompson (D-MS).
The legislators also echoed concerns raised by the Government Accountability
Office (GAO) report from August 2013.
The GAO report found that the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS)
had “not thoroughly evaluated the performance of each of the three pilot projects”
due to limitations in the analysis of data from chicken plants and a lack of
report on the turkey plants.
In response to the GAO report, Elisabeth Hagen, then Undersecretary
of Food Safety, agreed and stated that when USDA issues the final rule, “FSIS
will present the updated analyses, including the cost benefit analysis, in a
manner that will facilitate public understanding of information used to support
the rulemaking.”
Vilsack stated that those at FSIS “are confident in
saying that there has been an increase of compliance with safety standards.” In addition, he said the program would
require “more inspections offline where we know pathogens attach, it would
require more verification of compliance with standard operating procedures and
with HACCP requirements…it would require new microbiological testing and record
keeping that currently doesn’t exist, and it would make strong recommendations
relative to worker safety.”
For more information on food safety, please visit the
National Agricultural Law Center’s website here.
