The United States is moving to
shift some food safety scrutiny from inspectors to pork-packing-plant
employees.
It has already done
something similar for poultry.
The shift is outlined in
proposals to amend regulations revealed late last week.
“If establishment personnel
sorted and removed unfit animals before ante-mortem inspection and trimmed and
identified defects on carcasses and parts before post-mortem inspection by Food
Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) inspectors, FSIS inspectors would be presented
with healthier animals and carcasses that have fewer defects to inspect, which
would allow inspectors to conduct a more efficient and effective inspection of
each animal and each carcass.” the agency said.
“Such a system would allow
FSIS inspectors to conduct a more efficient inspection.
“As a result, FSIS could
assign fewer inspectors to online inspection, freeing up Agency resources to
conduct more offline inspection activities that FSIS has determined are more
effective in ensuring food safety, such as verifying compliance with
sanitation, HACCP, and humane handling requirements,” the agency said.
This is all well and fine if everybody does what they ought to do. But, unfortunately, that's not always the case, so food poisoning outbreaks continue to happen.
