Risking Food Safety, FDA to allow Slaughterhouses to Self Police

originally posted by: underwerks

originally posted by: Xtrozero

originally posted by: underwerks

So how is removing 40 percent of inspectors and giving the responsibility to untrained company employees going to fix these food inspection problems your article talks about?

That's the perfect anti-fix. Which make sense given the administration it's coming from. Instead of fixing the problems, just get rid of the agencies that the problem exists in..

/facepalm

I guess you didn't read the article... You want to call it an anti fix and want to blame the administration and neither of them is in the article. lol geez

I read the entire article. How is that any type of counter argument to what's in the OP?

The article is about the lapses in oversight by the USDA and FDA in inspecting meat. Again, how does less inspectors remedy bad inspections?

Did you read it though? It's only affecting PORK PLANTS. not all meat.

I think people are overreacting. They are not eliminating food inspection and putting it in the hands of the slaughterhouse. ALL PORK will still.... at the end...ultimately be inspected by officials. I don't think people tend to read everything, rather, they just read a headline and go off that without looking further into it.

a reply to: underwerks

There is nothing stopping the sellers and consumers from testing the products on their own.
This isn't 1906 you know.

originally posted by: Xcalibur254

There was actually a pilot program run to test these new lack of regulations. It was found that facilities that were allowed to self-police were guilty of more violations than those operating under the current regulations.

I think everyone is missing the point. At the major slaughterhouses, they will have inspectors, it's the small ranchers that can only sell the cows by percentages and not by the item/pound before they are slaughtered that are being hugely hamstringed and forced down paths that make it extremely hard to function. I believe that is what is being looked at as part of the reduction of the whole 100% USDA inspection requirements right now. They can sell 1/2 a cow but not a steak unless they take their cow to a USDA slaughterhouse, seems so backassward. The major producers will not see much of a change other than streamlining some antiquated regs.

Once again this is bi-partisan and backed by major universities including Harvard, not being an expert in all this at some point we need to say mybe they are right, and not go all chicken little on it all.