This is not an usual “feel good” Meat Inspection story. It’s intent here is to present some seldom addressed realities of the job; as I have come to know it over the past 4 decades. Starting out naïve, I believed that the Federal Government would only put forth worthwhile, common sense Meat Inspection programs. After all, the USDA has always been said to be The People’s Department; that existed to serve the masses. I was certain back then that only the best and the brightest would get appointed to assure the wholesomeness of the Nation’s meat supply. The folklore surrounding how Upton Sinclair single handedly brought about a meat safety revolution in America is the stuff of legend. The rest of that well known story is that Upton was a sensationalistic, socialist novel writer; which Teddy Roosevelt shrewdly used to help gain more control over the big meat companies of the era. Once the Government gets hold of something it only grows larger, and seldom stays stable or shrinks. To this day, slaughter plant Inspection is a noble and worthwhile cause. Inspection veterinarians are in charge of Lay Inspectors. The downside to that arrangement is that not all veterinarians have a Supervisory aptitude/disposition. Lay Inspectors are trained to identify suspect live animals and carcasses from the animal disassembly lines; for further wholesomeness review by veterinarians. Veterinarian Inspectors make the final disposition. If Lay Inspectors and plant kill-floor employees miss something, that carcass will go on down the line. Lay kill-floor Inspectors also “ink-out” (condemn) or have surface trimming done on any contaminated portions of offal or carcasses. The USDA’s FSIS (Food Safety & Inspection Service) currently employs about 8,700 people. Veterinarian Supervisors, upper Management, compliance officers, harvest plant Inspectors and processing plant Inspectors are all parts of that number. I do not know how many harvest plant inspectors the are out of the 8,700 total. But, for sure there are many more Federally Inspected (selling their finished goods across State lines) further processing plants than there are harvest plants. It is however true that harvest plants are most often larger plants; where economies of scale make for more efficient usage of tax payer provided Meat Inspection personnel. So, the actual number of Federal kill-floor inspectors is not all that big. Just for the sake of making that point, lets say that all 8,700 FSIS employees are working at slaughter Inspection. Annual conventional livestock species harvest numbers are: 9,346,660,000 chickens, 223,003,000 turkeys, 124,061,094 hogs, 7,499,676 sheep and 36,163,973 cattle. As you can see, the wholesome carcass function of Meat Inspection is spread tremendously thin. Keeping diseased and medication tainted carcasses out of our meat supply is job one. Of course, meat companies protect their finical interests by also doing their best to only ship out wholesome meat. Still, localized abscesses are still occasionally found in either primal or sub-primal meat cuts by retail meat cutters. Abscesses that get distributed to the retail level seem to come mainly from hogs. If anything looks wrong with poultry during harvest the entire carcass is thrown out. Thanks to lawyers always looking for more work, ex-employees that like to whistle-blow and the fact that meat companies can’t afford very much bad press, there does not exist a pressing need for further processing meat plant Inspection. In the past there has occasionally been talk of the 18,000 employee FDA taking over Meat Inspection, but as I pointed out earlier Government only grows bigger. Interestingly, further meat processors don’t really mind being Inspected because a lot of the time Inspectors are not on-site, processors only have to pay the FSIS for any overtime or holiday hours that they run production and the U.S. Inspected & Passed logo on product cartons & packaging labels is great feel-good marketing tool.
Further processing Meat Inspection lessons learned: 1) Provide a nice office with a solid door (no glass to see through) locking door for Inspectors. The more comfortable Inspectors feel, usually the less you will see of them. 2) If Inspectors are lonely and want to talk, make time for them, or else risk receiving nitpicking write-ups. 3) If you aspire to be a Lay Meat Inspector it does not pay to have more than a High School education. I traveled 100 miles twice to take the Meat Inspector’s aptitude test; after having a B.S. in Agriculture (Majoring in Meat Science). After the second test I requested to now my test scores and was told no and that I would have to hire a lawyer to find out. I was even working as an intermittent USDA kill-floor Inspector at that time, and was trying to get hired-on fulltime. Almost everything that I just read online about Food Inspection career qualifications is off base for Meat Inspection. Traditionally a lot of Meat Inspectors started out as meat industry kill-floor employees, then kill-floor Inspectors, then later further processing plant Inspectors. Military veterans already know how to be good Government employees; plus there’s a veteran’s preference for getting hired. If you happen to be a demographic that is currently “under-represented” within the FSIS, that can help get you hired. There also seems to be some nepotism from what I have seen. Or, maybe some folks just learn of job openings from their Inspector relatives.
As a Federal Meat Grader I was trained to not do Inspector’s jobs, but rather report any wholesomeness concerns to them; so as to not “step on their toes.” Bringing issues up to processing plant Inspectors never seemed to work out very well for me. Of the times that I did express concerns to Inspectors, these are some of the responses I received: 1) No corrective action was taken, nor followed up to with me (that inaction happened on several occasions over the years). 2) Was told by an Inspector that microwave melted shipping carton lamination on previously frozen 60 pound blocks of coarse ground beef was beef fat. When I brought the same issue to the company’s attention anyway I was told by Plant Supervision that it was edible. 3) Was once told by an Inspector to put on my big boy panties and take care of an issue. 4) Was told by an Inspector that they didn’t feel like going out on the production floor that day.
Most often at further meat processing plants there was not a Meat Inspector on site to bring up food safety concerns with. Leaving notes or trying to call never seemed to work out very well. Late one night I observed that clumps of sodium phosphate were not dissolved in a batch of patty pre-mix. The Inspector was not on-site; so I brought it up to the Night Plant Manager. I was told that it was not a problem and that it happens all the time. At production start-up it was a fairly common occurrence to find 300 pound capacity rolling meat tubs that were not totally clean, drained of excess cleaning water and then sanitized. Whenever I found such tubs on production lines that I was covering for the day, I would have the sanitation crew take care of it before they left work. The trick was getting out on the production floor before grinding area personnel started throwing meat blocks that day. After a while, whenever sewer cleanout caps were missing on the production floor I would go directly to the maintenance department. Cleanouts do not have P-traps; so sewer gas will carry bacteria directly into production areas.
Most further meat processing pant now use inline FOD (Foreign Object Detection) equipment to kick out objectionable materials such as bone, metal, plastic or wood. But, it is not unallowable for shredded meat items to be produced without mechanized “tooth hazard” removal.
Then there’s the “scientific studies” that allow some room segregated meat product production to run continuously for up to 3 days. Problem was that some such lines did indeed shut down for about 6 hours between production worker shifts. By the time production resumed there was a lot of darkened, dehydrated meat in the grinding & patty forming area.
At one point (for several years) faux char-marks were sprayed onto precooked patties, just after they exited the forming machine. Commercial caramel coloring, in amounts well above what was in the approved product formulation, was being used to alter one side of the patties’ appearance.
97% of the dressed hot poultry carcasses in the U.S. go directly through a common ice water bath that contains enough chlorine to knockdown most of the salmonella that is indigenous to fowl skins. And, poultry soaks up a lot of water.
Is Federal Meat Inspection needed? Somewhat. Does political influence buying effect FSIS’s functioning? To some extent. Is there room for improvements? Maybe a little.
Since I have you here, I want to tell you two related stories: In the early 90’s I was working Supervision in a small intercity meat plant. In the dry-storage area we had rats living in voids under the concrete slab; where the fill-sand had settled after the concrete was poured. Rats would squeeze up through tiny edge holes looking for food. About 0200 one night on 2nd shift I was walking in the dock area talking with a lonely Inspector; when a big rat ran in front of us. The dock was immediately closed and we sent plant employees in with pellet guns to try and shoot the rats. Our contracted exterminator also became more involved. Then, a short time after that incident we discovered rats living in the boxed raw meat freezer. These were in boxes of vacuum packed whole Choice briskets. Cardboard boxes and plastic vacuum bags had been shredded to make warm nests. Food was plentiful and the moisture gleaned from raw meat and incidental freezer ice must have been enough for them to live off of. It was determined that those rats had been shipped in from a freezer storage facility.
One more Inspection story: While working at the same little plant I had a Packaging Supervisor that, unbeknownst to me, had been placing things on the scale along with product cartons to increase the printed catch weight labels on finished cases. At some point Meat inspection Compliance received a complaint from an upstate New York shop owner who had checked label weights against his scale. The Supervisor in question got fired immediately and there were threats made of letting me go as well for not catching him.
The meat business is generally boring, but anything can and likely has happened at one time or another. Perception is everything and Meat Inspection is a good tried and true feel-good organization.