In this public comment on a proposed change in policy by the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, I offer strong support for the idea of requiring all meat and poultry plants to provide written responses to noncompliance records, or NR’s, that the Agency’s inspection personnel issue. An NR is the way the Agency documents a plant’s failure to comply with some regulatory requirements. As such, they are akin to when a local health department inspects a restaurant and documents on the inspection form all code-violations found. The Agency should do more to make all inspection-related documents readily available for public review online. The Agency should increase transparency and accountability around the inspection process.
Denis Stearns, is of-counsel at Marler Clark, earned a BA in philosophy from Seattle University, and his law degree from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He graduated from both schools with high honors, and won numerous awards for service and
The Food and Drug Administration uses import alerts to enforce U.S. food safety regulations for food from foreign countries. The agency updates and modifies the alerts as needed.
Recent
The 2025 dietary guidelines have just been published and they include a bigger focus on including red meat and fat in the foods Americans eat.
The guidelines, which will be
OPINION
In an article that will soon be published in the Seattle Law Review, I take a look at food safety through the lens of the “pink slime” controversy and
“Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?”
— from Robert Browning’s “Andrea del Sarto”
Part 2: Does case law support FDA’
