Meat + Poultry - February 2006 - 15

Washington
Assessing risks
By Bernard Shire
meat&poultry@sosland.com

In its latest effort to enhance its food
inspection system, U.S. Dept. of Agriculture officials are looking to adopt
a risk-based inspection program for
government-regulated meat and poultry products. That's not to say the Food
Safety and Inspection Service doesn't
currently use risk-based inspection. The
onset of HACCP eight years ago was a
move toward basing inspection on the
risk posed by the products, as well as
plants producing them. The adoption of
the Listeria regulation three years ago,
with its risk-based sampling, brought
the agency even closer.
According to F.S.I.S. spokesman
Steven Cohen, the risk-based inspection system now being developed is
building on a process already under
way. The agency's goal is to make its
illness-prevention efforts even more
efficient and successful while changing
its resources so products and facilities
posing the highest level of risks to consumers are inspected most often.
The process moved forward during
a recent meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Meat and Poultry Inspection, a U.S.D.A. advisory
group. Dr. Richard Raymond, the
U.S.D.A.'s under secretary for food
safety, wants to involve all stakeholders, including industry, the inspectors'
labor union and consumer groups. He
wants to establish risk-based inspections as soon as possible. As part of
this process, the advisory committee
decided an unbiased third party such
as the National Academy of Sciences
should recommend how to design and
implement risk-based inspection.
Several groups have already given
their input on the matter. Industry wants
Noncompliance Reports revamped, believing they are too often not directly
linked to food safety. Plant officials
are also clamoring for assurance that
microbiological data they share with
U.S.D.A. not be used against them in

the form of more regulatory actions.
Reluctance within the industry to share
such data has hindered government efforts to change to a risk-based inspection system.
Consumer groups question U.S.D.A.'s
authority to make inspections more
risk based under the current inspection
laws. These groups, along with the inspectors' union, believe there must be
continuous inspection at all plants-
which negates the idea of some plants
having more inspection than others.
All the industry trade associations
have been collaborating on how to
develop such a plan. Dr. Craig Henry,
senior vice president of scientific and
regulatory affairs at the Food Products
Association, Washington, D.C., has
been the lightning rod for the industry.
He says efforts to move toward riskbased assessments began when Dr. Elsa
Murano, then-U.S.D.A. Under Secretary for Food Safety, released "Fulfilling the Vision: Initiatives in Protecting
Public Health" in July 2004.
"We had HIMP (the HACCP-based
Inspection Models Project), which
was geared toward (agency) resource
allocation, and the inspector union
sued because it was afraid its members
would lose their jobs," Henry says.
Then, there was F.S.I.S.'s Hazard Control Coefficient Program, which ranked
plants. "Why would you rank plants if
you're not going to reallocate the (inspection) resources?" Henry asks.
"The agency is sitting on a boatload
of data it could already be using," Henry says, regarding F.S.I.S.'s search for
additional information so it can quantify food safety risks. "For example,
the government has squashed poultry
interventions for years that industry
charges would have lowered the risk
in such plants. And we're concerned
about (U.S.D.A.) acquiring data that
could be used against us."
Risk-based inspections will affect
large and small plants, Henry notes.
Facilities that have weak food safety
programs should receive government

help and expertise, "not a boatload of
N.R.s that won't do anything to improve food safety at all," he adds.
Like their larger colleagues, small
processors believe the amount of inspection should be based on risk. But
doubt looms about whether a new
risk-based inspection program will
improve food safety at small plants
or end up closing down even more
of them. Small processors fear the
latter, because most changes in government inspection since the onset of
HACCP eight years ago seem easier
for large plants to implement. Small
processors fear they will be tagged
by U.S.D.A. as the riskiest operations, making the riskiest products,
and thus subject to more inspection
than "less risky" plants.
This evolution of meat and poultry
inspection also concerns state meat
inspection program leaders. Dr. Kris
Mazurczak, director of the Illinois
State Meat Inspection Program, says
he's gotten no feedback so far about
how his inspectors and plants will be
affected by risk-based inspection. But
he knows "equal to" state inspection
programs such as Illinois' will eventually face it because they must follow
U.S.D.A. inspection rules.
Bernard Shire is a food safety
consultant and writer for Shire &
Associates in Lancaster, Pa., and
previously was director of regulatory
and legislative affairs for the American
Association of Meat Processors.
We would like to hear from you- your comments
and questions about this article are welcome.
E-mail the author at: meat&poultry@sosland.com

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February 2006

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Meat + Poultry - February 2006

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