Meat inspector: “We are no longer in charge of safety”

[Luddly Neddite]

Meat inspector: ?We are no longer in charge of safety? - Salon.com

In interviews, six USDA inspectors working in the pilot plants raised health concerns. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they believed their jobs would be in jeopardy otherwise.

Several said company and government workers are yelled at, threatened and shunned if they try to slow down or stop the accelerated processing lines or complain too aggressively about inadequate safety checks. They also warned that the reduction in the ranks of government inspectors in the plants has compromised the safety of the meat.

“We are no longer in charge of safety,” said an inspector with more than 15 years of experience. “That’s what the public needs to know.”

Maybe, just maybe, the focus on price and efficiency is a bit shortsighted.

USDA pilot program fails to stop contaminated meat - The Washington Post

A meat inspection program that the Agriculture Department plans to roll out in pork plants nationwide has repeatedly failed to stop the production of contaminated meat at American and foreign plants that have already adopted the approach, documents and interviews show.

The program allows meat producers to increase the speed of processing lines by as much as 20 percent and cuts the number of USDA safety inspectors at each plant in half, replacing them with private inspectors employed by meat companies. The approach has been used for more than a decade by five American hog plants under a pilot program.

But three of these plants were among the 10 worst offenders in the country for health and safety violations, with serious lapses that included failing to remove fecal matter from meat, according to a report this spring by the USDA inspector general. The plant with the worst record by far was one of the five in the pilot program.

In these cases, the contaminated meat did not leave the plants because it was caught by government inspectors once it reached the end of the processing line. But federal officials consider this too late in the process and repeatedly cited the plants for serious safety failures.

Remember that China bought one of the worst offenders, Smithfield. As low as our standards are, China's are almost non-existent. And, if R's get their way, we will soon be right down there with China.

Vegetarians and vegans aren't safe either because there are slaughterhouse byproducts in so many products. That's why we eat only whole foods. But, that's still no guarantee.

What bothers me the most about this is that some parents would rather feed their kids garbage than agree with our First Lady that we should feed our kids quality food.