Last Friday, the head of the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service wrote a column on Huffington Post discounting critics of his plan to outsource most of the poultry inspections process and leave one federal inspector responsible for reviewing three chickens every second. FSIS Administrator Alfred Almanza blamed the media for reporting “misinformation” about the plan and claimed that the valid concerns being raised by FSIS inspectors and other knowledgeable groups are simply “myths…being touted by people who are not experts on the subject.”
Today, the executive director of Food & Water Watch — one of the chief organizations opposed to this dangerous proposal — has posted her own rebuttal. Wenonah Hauter correctly points out that this proposal is about saving money, plain and simple, not protecting the public health as FSIS Administrator Alfred Almanza claims.
The Food & Water Watch rebuttal follows on the heels of other critiques posted by concerned groups. Joe Hansen, international president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, wrote that ramping up line speeds to 175 chickens per minute will heighten the risk of workers being subjected to repetitive motion injuries and Musculoskeletal Disorders.
And Craig McCord, co-founder of the People Who Feed Us, points out that handing over inspection to the slaughterhouses will push more diseased and unsafe poultry onto dinner tables because they have a monetary incentive to sell as much of their product as possible.
There is one week left to submit your own comments on this plan. Tell the USDA you value safety over speed and believe poultry inspection shouldn’t be outsourced to the very companies who are trying to sell us their product!
LET THEM EAT CHICKEN 