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Meat Inspection System Failing©
Fecal matter and other contaminants are getting into Americans food supply because the government's new meat inspection procedures take control of the inspection process from government inspectors and give it to the meat processing companies themselves, according to Jungle 2000, a report released by Government Accountability Project, a Washington-based public-interest law firm, and Public Citizen http://www.citizen.org, a Washington-based consumer organization.
Jungle 2000, so named after Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" that exposed unsanitary meat processing practices in the last century,surveys conditions reported by 451 federal meat inspectors at 92 percent of the country's meat-processing plants.
"Our survey warns consumers that on a good day, their meat and poultry are inspected under an industry honor system, federal inspectors check paperwork, not food, and are prohibited from removing feces and other contaminants before products are stamped with the purple USDA seal of approval," Felicia Nestor, food safety project director with the Government Accountability Project http://www.whistleblower.org/ and the report's co-author, said. "It is not infrequent that industry workers secretly ask the inspectors for help because they're pressured to put profits ahead of public health. On a bad day, extensive shortages of inspectors mean that inspectors are not in the plants at all."
"The USDA says it has zero tolerance for fecal matter, but the survey clearly shows that such contamination is occurring," said Wenonah Hauter, of Public Citizen.
The report says that fecal matter, vomit, and metal shards on meat products are regularly observed by the majority of federal inspectors who were surveyed. Under the new inspection system, called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point or HACCP, inspecors are't allowed to take action.
The study echoed similar results reported by the USDA's inspector general in June. Roger Viadero, the USDA's inspector general, said at that time that his investigation found filthy plant conditions and plants being allowed to operate after repeated food safety violations. Viadero's report blamed the conditions on HACCP, the new inspection system.
Meat industry and Department of Agriculture officials questioned the validity of Jungle 2000.
Thomas Billy, administrator for the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service, cited a March 17 article in the Centers for Disease Control's periodical indicating a reduction in food-borne illness that coincided with the new inspection system.
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