Do You Want The Meat Industry Regulating Itself?

The photo above (from io9gizmodo.com) shows pork cutting in a slaughter house in 1905 -- the year Upton Sinclair released his expose of the meat industry and exposed its danger to workers and consumers. The book caused the government to introduce rules and put government inspectors in that industry.

Now it seems that the Trump administration wants to take a step backward, and let the pork industry start regulating itself to a large extent. Is this something you want to see? Do you think industry inspectors will do as good a job as government inspectors? Or would this just create a more dangerous situation for both plant workers and consumers?

Here's just part of an article by Tom Philpott in Mother Jones about the Trump administration's plan:

Next time you tuck into a pork chop or a carnitas-filled burrito, spare a thought for the people who work the kill line at hog slaughterhouses. Meatpacking workers incur injury and illness at 2.5 times the national average; and repetitive-motion conditions at a rate nearly seven times as high as that of other private industries. Much has to do with the speed at which they work: Hog carcasses weighing as much as 270 pounds come at workers at an average rate of 977 per hour, or about 16 per minute. 

President Donald Trump’s US Department of Agriculture is close to finalizing a plan that would allow those lines to move even faster, reports the Washington Post’s Kimberly Kindy. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is currently responsible for overseeing the kill line, making sure that tainted meat doesn’t enter the food supply. The plan would partially privatize federal oversight of pork facilities, cutting the number of federal inspectors by about 40 percent and replacing them with plant employees, Kindy adds. In other words, the task of ensuring the safety of the meat supply will largely shift from people paid by the public to people being paid by the meat industry. . . .

The Trump administration appears to be bringing new zeal to the task of reshaping meat inspection. Once it finalizes the new pork inspection, the USDA plans to roll out a  similar scheme for the beef industry, Kindy reports. And last fall, the agency announced it would would let some chicken slaughterhouses speed up their kill lines from 140 birds per minute to 175 birds per minute.

The USDA has long insisted pulling inspectors off the kill line—while also speeding it up—is about “modernization.” “Advances in animal science, market hog production systems, biosecurity and veterinary medicine have eliminated the vast majority of diseases inspected for under traditional inspection,” the agency claimed in a 2018 explainer. 

What does this deregulation mean for the safety of our meat? We already have a sneak preview. For years, a USDA pilot program has allowed five large hog slaughterhouses to operate at higher line speeds with fewer inspectors. A 2013 audit by the USDA’s Office of Inspector General found that the USDA “did not provide adequate oversight” of the pilot facilities over its first 15 years, and as a result, the plants “may have a higher potential for food safety risks.”