For the past quarter-century, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has run two options for inspecting hogs. The HACCP-based Inspection Model Project or HIMP evolved into the New Swine Inspection System or NSIS pilot in 2014. And HIMP, or NSIS, have grown up alongside traditional hog inspection protocols used for
Continue Reading Dueling inspection systems produce another round of competing data
A federal judge in St. Paul is scheduled, on Jan. 27, to consider the government’s motion to dismiss a last-ditch attempt to stop the modernization of swine inspection procedures.
Unions led by the United Food and Commercial Workers sued the U.S. Department of Agriculture Oct. 7, 2019, over the Food
Continue Reading Union challenge to new swine inspections for market hogs might be dismissed
USDA’s new swine slaughter inspection system has been 22 years in the making. And if the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) wants to avoid further delay, it likely must act this month or next before the federal Fiscal Year 2019 expires on Sept. 30.
The Fiscal Year 2020 Agricultural
Continue Reading Real deadline for new hog slaughter inspection rule might be Sept. 30
To get a “speed waiver” to run an “evisceration line” at up to 175 birds per minute, rather than the current 140 bpm, is going to require poultry businesses to jump through a few more hoops at USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
While most people don’t have a
Continue Reading Poultry line speed waivers possible if producers meet new criteria
Changes to how pork slaughter plants could be regulated are going forward after a mere 21 years in the making. President Donald Trump’s Administration has approved a final rule that had its origin during President Bill Clinton’s Administration.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) isn’t
Continue Reading OMB approves HIMP swine slaughter rule; industry pleased
Sixty liberal and mostly urban congressional Democrats have weighed in with their opinions about making bacon, telling the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture to further delay expansion of the 20-year old hog Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point-based Inspection Models Project (HIMP) pilot program. 
Secretary Tom Vilsack, now President Obama’s longest
Continue Reading Sixty Democrats ask Vilsack to delay new hog slaughter rule
It’s impossible to say what will be the big food safety story of 2016. The ultimate unpredictable is what foodborne outbreaks will dominate the headlines and how they may impact policy decisions. But we’ve done our best to list the regulatory activities to keep on your radar for the coming
Continue Reading Food Safety Regulatory Forecast for 2016
Joe Ferguson says he just couldn’t take it any longer. The former inspector for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) spent more than 23 years monitoring operations inside pork processing plants inspecting hog carcasses for signs of anything that could translate to a food
Continue Reading Retired USDA Inspectors Share Concerns About HIMP Project
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has dismissed a lawsuit Food & Water Watch Inc. and two of its members filed last fall against U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack to challenge the agency’s New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS). The language the
Continue Reading Judge Dismisses Challenge to USDA Poultry Inspection Rule
(This is Part 2 of an interview with journalist and author Ted Genoways. Part 1 is here.) Ted Genoways is the author of “The Chain: Farm, Factory and the Fate of Our Food,” a new book that explores the wide-reaching impacts of factory pork production and the consequences of
Continue Reading Q&A with Ted Genoways on Food Safety in Pork Processing, Part 2
