Replacing poultry inspectors with factory workers might not be greatest idea, says GAO{large image}

[xchrom]

http://grist.org/news/replacing-poultry-inspectors-with-factory-workers-might-not-be-greatest-idea-says-gao/

?w=250&h=187
Let’s hope this chicken was inspected by a government worker.


Who would you rather have check factory chickens for signs of illness and smears of crap — a USDA inspector or a factory employee?

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has long stationed its own inspectors along factory lines at poultry plants. But now it’s preparing to reassign those workers to other tasks and allow the agricultural companies to inspect their own birds along processing lines, which would help speed up business operations.

Food-safety groups are raising alarms about the proposed shift, and a new government report indicates that they might well have reason to be concerned.


The USDA’s draft poultry-inspection rules are based on the results of pilot projects in which private-industry inspections were shown to be safe, the department says. But the new report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office says the USDA lacks the data needed to make such claims. The GAO report points out that the department “has not thoroughly evaluated the performance of each of the pilot projects over time even though the agency stated it would do so when it announced the pilot projects,” and at least in one case it used “snapshots of data” from limited periods of time instead of data from the whole period of the pilot project.

[bklyncowgirl]

1. Letting the fox guard the hen house--literally

Seriously, what could possibly go wrong?

I would imagine that those processing plants knew damn well that this was something that could get the inspectors off their backs and were no doubt on their very best behavior.

Once this 'trial period' is done it will be back to "The Jungle" and the consumer be damned.

[Turbineguy]

2. A republican dream.

To make everybody sick.

[Jackpine Radical]

3. Thank God we have a Democratic Administration in place to protect the consumer.

Last edited Sat Sep 7, 2013, 09:46 AM - Edit history (1)

And preserve public education.

And keep private contractors out of National Security operations.

And…

…………Aw, crap. That nice stuff I drank is starting to wear off.

[xchrom]

4. !

[Scuba]

5. +1