Washington - Emphasizing that inspectors must continue to be the watchdogs for America's consumers -- not profit-driven processing plants -- the American Federation of Government Employees is urging Congress to continue the examination of all meat and poultry carcasses by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“The meat and poultry industry should assume more responsibility for ensuring food safety, but not at the cost of eliminating vital on-site inspections by qualified government inspectors,” AFGE National President Bobby L. Harnage stressed in his statement May 20 before the House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry.
“The new inspection tasks undertaken as part of the implementation of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point Systems (HACCP) involve the mere review of company paperwork, rather than the direct inspection of production, equipment or facilities,” Harnage continued. “While HACCP could be used to augment food safety, USDA is using it as a back door to deregulate the meat and poultry industry.”
Not willing to sit back and watch while USDA abdicates its responsibility to the public, AFGE has filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to halt implementation of HACCP which unwisely eliminates the critical postmortem inspection of meat and poultry carcasses and instead relies on an industry “honor system.”
(EDITOR’S NOTE: Only a radical union representative could possibly define HACCP as an “honor system”. Plants must submit detailed plans to improve food safety that are then approved by USDA. The plans must include oversight controls and remedies for potential problems. All the AFGE is really concerned about is the possibility that they may lose some membership, and even that is unlikely under HACCP).
Harnage urged the subcommittee to hold additional hearings to allow federal inspectors and the unions that represent them to weigh in on this critical issue. “More questions need to be answered,” Harnage concluded. “For instance, will USDA or the industry under HACCP determine what tasks are performed by federal inspectors and will current pilot projects include testing for such dangerous illnesses as 'Mad Cow' disease?”
The American Federation of Government Employees, AFL-CIO, is the largest union for government employees, representing 600,000 federal workers in the United States and overseas, as well as employees of the District of Columbia. AFGE represents some 6,300 federal meat and poultry inspectors nationwide.
Meat Industry Insights News Service
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