New Pork Processing Rules Raise Food, Worker Safety Concerns
Mike Moen, Public News Service – MN
MINNEAPOLIS – Several labor unions filed a federal lawsuit in Minneapolis this week over controversial U.S. Department of Agriculture rule changes for regulating pork processing plants.
The plaintiffs say a key concern is a provision that removes maximum
line speeds when bringing hogs to slaughter. They say allowing faster
line speeds compromises worker safety as well as food safety.
Kim VanderWall, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota’s Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, said it could open the door for the spread of viruses in the supply chain.
“You could imagine if the carcasses are coming by more quickly,” she
said, “we might not detect the same things that we would detect if it
was going a little bit slower.”
The USDA has said the changes are intended to modernize the
pork-processing system. They also include reducing the number of federal
meat inspectors on processing lines by 40%. The complaint alleges that a
combination of faster line speeds and fewer inspectors is asking for
trouble, and aims to block the changes.
The trouble isn’t only on the processing lines. VanderWaal said another
example of how the changes could compromise food safety is through
transportation. Even if a truck that arrives at a processing plant is
perfectly clean, she said, all it takes is one tainted batch of product
leaving the facility to create problems.
“Sometimes, they leave the slaughter plants with detectable virus on the
surface of those trucks,” she said, “and those trucks can go back to
pick up more pigs within a farm, and that can be a potential way for
farm spread of viruses.”
VanderWaal said this comes at a time when the industry still is trying
to get a handle on a particular virus that has plagued the swine
industry for nearly 30 years. She said Porcine Reproductive and Respiratory Syndrome Virus (PRSSV) – also known as Betaarterivirus suid 1 – costs the industry more than $500 million annually.
VanderWall’s team recently received a grant to help study the virus and
its complex evolution, so that regulators and producers can prevent its
spread.
The lawsuit is online at citizen.org.