FSIS reports first enforcement numbers for federal fiscal year 2022
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s Quarterly Enforcement Reports always begin the same way. They wrap up the thousands of inspection procedures performed by FSIS staff at federally...
View ArticleProject looks at how to modernize meat inspection
New technology could bring benefits to meat inspection in the United Kingdom but there are still issues to overcome, according to a report. A project assessed the feasibility of using sensor...
View ArticleOregon’s state inspection program is 28th in the nation
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the State of Oregon have reached a cooperative agreement, under which the state inspection program may inspect meat products produced for...
View ArticleFSIS and Arkansas sign cooperative agreement for meat inspection program
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service and Arkansas have finalized a cooperative agreement under which state inspectors rather than federal inspectors may inspect meat products produced for...
View ArticleFSA struggling with skills gap post-Brexit says report
Authorities such as the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are struggling with a skills gap after the United Kingdom left the European Union, according to a report. The House of Commons Public Accounts...
View ArticleFSA staff may strike over pay; agency consults on meat charges
Some food safety staff at the Food Standards Agency (FSA) are being asked if they want to go on strike because of their pay. Several hundred meat inspectors, vets, and office-based staff in England,...
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Federal meat inspection has failed to adapt to operational environment
Editor’s note: This is the first of a four-part series. I had two simultaneous careers: the U.S. Army Reserve and the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). I graduated from the U.S. Army...
View ArticleFSIS and a fundmental truth
— OPINION — Editor’s note: This is Part 2 of a 4-part series. Between 1906 and 1992, FSIS and its predecessors attracted minimal public attention as they quietly pursued their assigned mission: assure...
View ArticleFSIS and fixing the problem
Editor’s note: This is part four of a four-part series. In the previous three articles, I described what I consider the underlying causes of the devolution of FSIS as an organization. Any fool can...
View ArticleFSA to stop discounted meat enforcement charges
The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is going ahead with plans to stop discounted enforcement prices in the meat industry despite strong opposition during a comment period. The consultation covered the...
View ArticleFederal Meat & Poultry Inspectors Add Up Busy Quarter
USDA recently disclosed criminal, civil, and administrative actions taken to enforce the federal meat and poultry inspection acts during the last three months of last year. In a 47-page enforcement...
View ArticleFSIS Issues New Trim Sampling Requirements
The USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a notice last week that gives its inspection personnel specific instructions on how to randomly select the beef trimmings to be tested...
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USDA Switching to New Plant Data Inspection System
Long in the making, the start-up date for USDA’s new Public Health Information System (PHIS) is now just two weeks away on May 29. It will replace the Performance Based Inspection System at all...
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Ohio First State to Gain Interstate Approval for Small, Local Meat Plants
Ohio this week became the first state to gain approval to sell meat from small, state-inspected slaughterhouses across state lines — a critical step toward rebuilding processing infrastructure for...
View ArticleDeLauro to Obama Admin: Don’t Weaken Food Safety in Canada Trade Intiatives
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) is urging the Obama administration to not weaken food safety protections in initiatives with Canada as the two countries work to hash out the details of the Regulatory...
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Vilsack: Under Sequestration, USDA Cannot Avoid Furloughing Meat Inspectors
Under the sequester, which recently put in place across-the-board budget cuts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has no choice but to eventually furlough meat inspectors, Agriculture Secretary Tom...
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Congress Passes Bill to Avert Meat Inspector Furloughs
The House on Thursday passed a continuing resolution that will head off furloughs for U.S. meat inspectors that would have taken place this summer as a result of the sequester. The measure, introduced...
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Food & Water Watch Questions USDA Assessment of Australian Meat-Inspection...
Consumer rights group Food & Water Watch has expressed concern in a new letter to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s 2011 decision to reaffirm equivalency...
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New Zealand Official: Blocked Beef in 2012 Unrelated to Private Meat Inspectors
The employment of some private meat inspectors in New Zealand had nothing to do with seven containers of beef exported to the United States in 2012 that USDA turned away, according to an official with...
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Prosecutions for Falsely Using USDA’s Stamp of Inspection Don’t Come Easy
Paul and Kelly Rosberg, who once owned Nebraska’s Finest Meats in Randolph, NE, put up a vigorous defense for many months against charges that they had sold to Omaha Public Schools 2,600 pounds of...
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What U.S. Can Learn From Other Countries About Meat, Poultry Inspection
As the new Modernization of Poultry Inspection rule went into effect Monday, the Pew Charitable Trusts and Center for Science in the Public Interest released their review of global meat and poultry...
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Canadian Union Says CFIA Budget Cuts Mean Fewer Meat Plant Inspections
Canada’s food safety agency has cut back on inspections of certain meat plants and that threatens food safety, the national president of the inspectors union said on Tuesday. At a press conference in...
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Faces of Food Safety: Meet Ahman Jilani of FSIS
Editor’s note: This is a recent installment in a series of employee profiles being published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety Inspection Service. Dr. Ahmad Jilani is a supervisory...
View ArticleEU mulls stronger meat, shellfish inspection regs; businesses push back
The European Commission is looking at revising rules for checks on meat and shellfish. Ante-mortem and post-mortem inspections could be performed under the responsibility of the official veterinarians...
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Letter to The Editor: Better food safety through science, not emotions
letter to the editor When the Washington Post, members of Congress, and 35 other organizations [1] raised concerns about a proposed modernization of a food safety and inspection process, we needed to...
View ArticleMeat inspection petition with 216,000 signatures given to FSA
A union in the United Kingdom has submitted a petition on meat inspections, signed by more than 216,000 people, to the Food Standards Agency. Steve Nash, a consumer advisor on E. coli O157, Unison...
View ArticleTrump’s order to keep meat plants open gives big business a loophole
Opinion President Trump’s executive order keeping meat plants open during the COVID-19 pandemic is a further threat to the health of the women and men who produce our food. The order would gut any...
View ArticleCertain meat sold online was not inspected; USDA warns public not to eat it
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is warning the public to not eat certain beef and lamb products because they were produced by One Meat Corp., doing...
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African food safety event hailed as ‘just the beginning’
Experts have called for debates at a conference on food safety in Africa to be the “beginning of a journey” during their concluding remarks. Blaise Ouattara, food safety and quality officer at the FAO...
View ArticleCourt dismisses appeal against FSA in meat inspection case
A long-running legal case involving the Food Standards Agency (FSA) and a meat business has been settled by the Supreme Court. Cleveland Meat Company (CMC), which stopped trading in 2017, and the...
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