A trio of successful prosecutions top the quarterly enforcement report from the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service for the period ending June 30th. The April to June period is the third quarter of the federal fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Linda Chen Mai, an employee of the Trinh Company in San Jose, CA, was sentenced in June for two felonies and two misdemeanors involving violations of the Federal Meat Inspection Act. She was given 90 days in a community confinement facility, 3 years probation, and required to pay a $250 special assessment fee. Mai was found guilty in March. FSIS also reported that Jorge F. Ortega, owner of Jorge’s Farm in Citrus Park, FL, plead guilty in May to three counts of selling adulterated and misbranded meat food products in commerce, selling meat in commerce without inspection, and violating the humane method of slaughter act. A date for sentencing has not yet been set. The third criminal case involves Edward Marstolf, owner of Petit Jean Farm in Morrilton, AR, who spent the quarter awaiting sentencing on two felony counts of forging and applying counterfeit marks of federal inspection and for selling and transporting misbranded meat products. There were no major civil actions during the quarter. Major civil actions involve seizures and inductive actions, usually taken under supervision by a federal district court. A USDA administrative law judge did issue a final decision and order permanently withdrawing federal meat inspection services from Randolph, NE-based Nebraska’s Finest Meats. That is the company owned by Paul and Kelly Rosberg, who were previously successfully prosecuted for selling meat without inspection to the Omaha Public Schools. FSIS filed a complaint to withdraw federal meat inspectors from Hot Springs Packing Co. in Hot Springs, AR, for the company’s failure to maintain its facility, which is dealing with repetitive positive results from Listeria monocytogenes tests. During the period, USDA initiated administrative actions against 83 of the meat, poultry and egg plants under its jurisdiction, and the agency closed actions in another 84 cases. It sent four notices of “probated activity” to small retailers. FSIS reported another decline in total livestock carcasses inspected, down by about 1 million head from the previous quarter at just over 34 million head. On the other hand, poultry was back up at more than 2.2 billion birds. Reductions in cattle herds have sent beef prices soaring and consumers to red meat alternatives such as chicken. Finally, FSIS detained 434,273 pounds of meat and poultry products from 75 establishments, about four times more than the previous quarter.