The US government is accelerating regulatory rollbacks to speed up production at meat plants, as companies express growing alarm at the impact of Covid-19 on their operations.
It has emerged that US meat plants are being granted permission to increase the speed of their production lines. This comes despite warnings that the waivers for higher speeds on slaughter and processing lines will compromise food safety.
The latest line speed increases, announced by the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) mean 11 poultry plants have been given waivers to operate higher line speeds in the past fortnight. A number of beef and pork plants have also been given waivers, including a beef plant in Kansas in late March. The move will allow the additional chicken factories to slaughter as many as 175 birds a minute – the equivalent of 3 per second.
A union representing federal food safety inspectors has said faster lines will make it harder to catch “pathology that shouldn’t be going out to the consumers”.
“There is no way that food safety is not compromised when the sole trained government inspector on the slaughter line in a chicken plant is expected to examine three birds every second,” said Tony Corbo, senior government affairs representative at Food & Water Watch. “The US government has stepped on the accelerator to grant these waivers while everyone is concentrating on the Covid-19 epidemic.”
It has emerged that US meat plants are being granted permission to increase the speed of their production lines. This comes despite warnings that the waivers for higher speeds on slaughter and processing lines will compromise food safety.
The latest line speed increases, announced by the Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) mean 11 poultry plants have been given waivers to operate higher line speeds in the past fortnight. A number of beef and pork plants have also been given waivers, including a beef plant in Kansas in late March. The move will allow the additional chicken factories to slaughter as many as 175 birds a minute – the equivalent of 3 per second.
A union representing federal food safety inspectors has said faster lines will make it harder to catch “pathology that shouldn’t be going out to the consumers”.
“There is no way that food safety is not compromised when the sole trained government inspector on the slaughter line in a chicken plant is expected to examine three birds every second,” said Tony Corbo, senior government affairs representative at Food & Water Watch. “The US government has stepped on the accelerator to grant these waivers while everyone is concentrating on the Covid-19 epidemic.”
Increased line speeds are supported by the poultry industry, which argues they do not represent additional risk to food or workers safety, and are necessary to remain financially competitive. Three years ago the National Chicken Council lobbied the government to scrap line speed limits completely, calling them “arbitrary”. Under traditional poultry processing rules, line speeds ran at 140 birds a minute, and required at least four inspectors to be stationed on each line, tasked with checking carcasses for defects, disease or contamination, including fecal matter which can cause salmonella. That has since been reduced to one inspector per line, with individual regulatory waivers enabling line speed increases.
“It potentially reduces some of the quality control efforts,” said Adam Speck, a senior commodity analyst at IHS Markit’s Agribusiness Intelligence.
At least one in 10 US poultry slaughterhouses failed government salmonella tests last year. In some categories, failure rates are as high as 34%. Targets to reduce salmonella disease outbreaks have also been missed, with a rise of 9% in the incidence rate over the last three years according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). A report by US consumer organisation PIRG found that meat and poultry recalls are up by 65% since 2013. Meanwhile a report by the CDC highlighted the rise in antibiotic-resistant salmonella as a serious threat that requires “prompt and sustained action”.
A report on the FSIS by the US Government Accountability Office in 2018 stated that a review of data had shown that “some plants are still not meeting pathogen standards – in some cases repeatedly not meeting the standards – and are allowed to operate”. It also pointed out that the agency still had no mandatory recall authority.
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