Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Baltimore.
In President Obama's budget presented on Wednesday, one of the provisions calls for cutting back
on food inspection, particularly of poultry, cutting back federal inspectors.
Now joining us to talk about why this matters is Tony Corbo. He's a senior lobbyist for
the food campaign at Food and Water Watch. He's responsible for food-related legislative
regulatory issues that come before Congress and the executive branch.
Thanks for joining us, Tony.
TONY CORBO, SENIOR LOBBYIST, FOOD AND WATER WATCH: Well, thanks for having me on.
JAY: So if I understand it correctly, the plan is--and the budget reflects this plan--to
cut back on U.S. meat and poultry inspectors and let the industry essentially inspect itself.
So what's wrong with that?
CORBO: What's wrong with that is that having USDA inspectors in these plants provides an
unbiased view of what is going on in those plants from a food safety standpoint, from
a sanitation standpoint. And so what the administration is proposing is to turn over a major proportion
of the inspection duties over to the companies, where the company employees will be doing
the jobs of the USDA inspectors. There'll be a token USDA inspection force left in these
plants.
JAY: So what evidence is the government going on, is President Obama's administration going
on that this is okay? There have been some pilot programs on this. What have they shown?
CORBO: Well, the pilot programs have been running since the late 1990s. And what the
pilots have shown is that in a lot of these plants--and there are 20 plants, 20 chicken
plants where they've used this new inspection model where they turned over the inspection
responsibilities over to the companies--and they've also increased the line speedsn in
these facilities--that the company-paid inspectors really do not catch a lot of the quality defects
that USDA alleges that the companies can do better than a USDA inspector. And the other
thing is that the plants do not have lower salmonella rates than those plants that receive
conventional inspection.
What brought this whole regulation about, this proposed regulation, is the fact that
Obama two years ago issued an executive order asking the federal government agencies to
look at regulations that could be eliminated and to have industry weigh in as to which
regulations they consider to be onerous or redundant. And, of course, the poultry industry
stepped up to the plate and said, we want fewer inspectors in these plants.
JAY: Now, but you just said that the self-inspected plants do not have lower rates of salmonella.
But isn't the point do they have higher rates?
CORBO: They do. I mean, when the administration proposed their regulation, they had a report
doing an evaluation of these pilot plants. And it showed the last two years of data that
they collected, that the pilot plants had actually higher salmonella rates than the
conventionally inspected plants. And lo and behold, just this past month--USDA does a
monthly report on the testing that the government does in these plants to test to see if the
salmonella rates are either high or low, and two of the pilot plants showed up as failing
the salmonella test.
So here's the ultimate irony. The administration keeps on going around and saying that this
new model, this new inspection model is going to be able to reduce salmonella, and yet all
of the evidence points the other way.
JAY: Now, if I understand it correctly--and to be transparent about this, I'm getting
this from your press release--this is all--we have not had a chance to research this ourselves
very far. But according to your press release, they're only--the federal government's only
going to save about $90 million over three years with this self-inspection. I mean, that
seems a complete pittance given the size of the budget. Yet this in theory could give
rise to some danger. What is the logic here?
CORBO: Well, I mean, that's one of the questions that we've raised all along, that, you know,
when you're talking about a $1 trillion deficit and you're talking about saving $90 million
over three years, you know, why go through all of this? And it just seems that what the
administration, especially the White House--and there's been--and the office of management
and budget is the one that's been driving this deregulatory move by the administration--is
that the industry, by being able to increase production to 175 birds per minute, will stand
to gain $260 million a year, adding to their bottom line, because they'll be able to increase
production and have fewer regulations to deal with.
JAY: But why can't they increase the lines and still have federal inspectors?
CORBO: Well, because the argument is that you can't visually catch all of this stuff.
Right now, the way the line speeds are regulated at USDA, each USDA inspector can only look
at up to 35 birds per minute. And so if you're going to eliminate that particular regulation--they
will have a token--they will have one inspector. They will have one inspector remaining at
the end of the line under this new model they're talking about.
But that one inspector will have to look at 175 birds a minute. That means every third
of a second, a chicken will be buzzing by. You're not going to catch anything. I don't
care how good you are as an inspector, whether you're a USDA inspector or a company inspector.
You're not going to see anything.
JAY: So I don't understand. Why don't they charge--if they're going to pay their own
inspectors, why don't--and they want to save money, why don't they make the poultry companies
pay for the federal inspectors, that at least there'd be independent inspectors?
CORBO: Right. But the problem is is that in other places where that's been done, you compromise
the work of the government inspector, because the companies will constantly remind you that
you're being paid by them. And so you want to have a--this is a public health program.
It's--to have USDA inspectors in these plants is to protect the public's health. And it
should be funded through regular tax dollars, rather than having the industry pay for it.
JAY: Now, I don't understand. From the point of view of the industry, doesn't it make them
more liable? I mean, if there is salmonella and they get sued, at least now they can blame
it on the federal inspectors to some extent. Now if there's a problem, they're going to
have to take the whole blame.
CORBO: Except for the fact that right now the government does not have the legal authority
to regulate salmonella in these plants. The best they can do is to publish on a monthly
basis the plants that have failed. Essentially it's a report card. You know, the government
has these standards. If the companies fail the standards, all they get is this little
slap on the wrist. They get their names published, you know, on a monthly report card. The USDA
cannot shut these plants down. They don't have the legal authority. They've lost court
cases in the past trying to regulate salmonella.
And that's our argument. If you really want to regulate food-borne pathogens in these
plants, then go to Congress and have those court decisions overturned, have the Congress
give you the legal authority to shut down a plant that has high rates of salmonella
that could cause food-borne illness, that could sicken, you know, thousands of people.
That's our argument here.
JAY: It boggles the mind. I would think most people think that's actually what's happening,
that there is that kind of regulation.
CORBO: It does. I mean, the thing is that the USDA has the legal authority to shut down
a plant for e. coli and hamburger meat, but it does not have the legal authority to shut
down a chicken plant for having salmonella. Actually, you can't even do that--we cannot
shut down a beef plant that has high rates of salmonella. Salmonella, for some reason
the courts have ruled that USDA does not have the authority to shut a place down for having
high levels of salmonella.
JAY: Alright. Thanks for joining us, Tony.
CORBO: Alright. Thank you.
JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.