Download PDF version of USDA Letter
Download Inspector Survey Excerpts

April 18, 2007


Dr. Richard Raymond
Under Secretary for Food Safety
Room 227E
James L. Whitten Building
12th St. and Jefferson Drive SW
Washington, DC 20250

Transmitted via facsimile: (202) 690-0820


Dear Dr. Raymond:

We are writing about the apparent lack of transparency by the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) regarding the extent to which the agency is meeting its statutory mandate for daily inspection in all meat and poultry processing plants. The efficacy of FSIS inspection is a critical issue because foodborne illness remains a significant public health problem. The recent release by the Centers for Disease Control of its FoodNet data indicates that the incidence of salmonellosis and illnesses associated with E. coli O157:H7, both associated with meat and poultry products, have not declined significantly in the past decade. We believe that a fully staffed inspection workforce can help achieve further reductions in foodborne illness, but it is becoming obvious to us that FSIS has failed to adequately address its staffing deficiencies.

The agency’s public statements about whether it is meeting the mandate of the law have been vague and irreconcilable and the agency has failed to provide concrete information to the public and to Congress. You and other agency officials continue to claim that the Agency conducts daily inspection in all processing plants. For instance, in your recent testimony before the House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations, you assured the subcommittee that the Agency’s plan to implement risk-based inspection (RBI) is “not about saving money or decreasing FSIS’ inspection force” and that under RBI “we’re still going to go to each plant every day.” Similarly, at the 2007 USDA Agricultural Outlook Forum, FSIS Deputy Assistant Administrator Daniel Engeljohn’s presentation claimed that the agency inspects nearly 6,000 processing plants “daily.” To put it bluntly, these statements are false, and the agency is aware they are false. Yet agency officials continue to mislead the U.S. Congress and the public.

There is abundant evidence that the agency has not been meeting the daily inspection mandate for quite some time. In fact, at the same congressional hearing in which you promised continued daily inspection, you admitted to Congress, for the first time, that the agency had done a recent survey and determined that several hundred plants have been officially under less than daily inspection for over 30 years. You were forced to issue Notice 22-07 on April 2, 2007 to correct that situation. However, according to information we have been receiving for years from FSIS inspection personnel, that is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Significantly, there is evidence there are likely an equal or greater number of plants that are, unofficially, not visited daily because the Agency has refused to fill long-term inspector vacancies.

When agency officials have been willing to admit “unofficial” lack of daily inspection, they claim it is due to rare, intermittent glitches, such as an inspector calling in sick. This is not only misleading – it is false. Instead, there are numerous inspectors throughout the country who have had to cover multiple-plant assignments for days or weeks at a time because the agency does not fill vacant inspector positions, making it impossible for the remaining inspectors to visit every plant every day. Evidence of this problem includes:

• Last summer, we alerted you that one inspector in the Albany District had been instructed to cover multiple assignments – he was responsible for inspecting 18 plants each day. The plants spread from the lower Hudson Valley in New York to Connecticut. It does not take a manpower specialist to figure out that daily inspection was not being performed for those plants.
• In the Beltsville employee feedback session that the agency conducted in last year in preparation for the unveiling of its risk-based inspection proposals, it was revealed that an inspector in the Philadelphia District was covering 26 processing plants in his/her assignment. Daily inspection was not being provided for all plants in that assignment.
• Last July we informed you that there were inspector vacancy rates of between 9 and 13 percent in several FSIS districts, with a 70 percent vacancy rate for assignments within the city of Chicago.
• In February 2007, we learned of inspector vacancy rates of between 10 and 22 percent in several FSIS districts which we have shared with FSIS management staff;
• Last year, the agency narrowly avoided having to furlough inspectors because of lack of funds.

We would like to remind you that we have a pending Freedom of Information Act request regarding inspector vacancy rates that you promised two months ago would be answered imminently. We still have not received an official response from the agency. The information this request should provide could reveal even more inspector vacancies.

Attached to this letter, we have included new information we have collected recently from frontline inspectors describing recent failures to provide daily inspection in specific circuits or plants.

Unfortunately, all of this information is anecdotal because the agency has repeatedly refused to collect data pertaining to lack of inspections. The agency has ignored recommendations in 2000 and 2004 by USDA’s own Office of Inspector General to collect information about which inspection tasks are not performed specifically because inspectors did not have time. The agency has also repeatedly ignored our recommendation that it implement routine recordkeeping procedures that would enable the agency to accurately determine when and where daily inspections are not occurring.

In a recent consumer meeting with FSIS administrators, Food & Water Watch staff again asked why the agency did not keep records of whether it was able to meet the mandate for daily inspection. Agency managers told us that this information is not relevant to the agency’s management controls. Each time we come to you with information about specific plants not receiving daily inspection, however, agency officials ask us to assist them by pointing out where this is happening. As you are aware, frontline inspection personnel are extremely reticent to go public with information critical of the agency because of the agency’s past record of punishing whistleblowers. Therefore, we do not have a constant flow of this information, and it should not be our job to collect it. For this and other obvious reasons, we believe that it is unreasonable, if not altogether farcical, that the agency refuses to use its daily information management system to collect this fundamental staffing information.

It is also obvious to us that agency management officials have continued to mislead the public and U.S. Congress about the agency’s ability to provide continuous inspection in all facilities under its jurisdiction even though the agency has had policies and at least anecdotal information to the contrary. At the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee hearing on March 29, a veteran member of the subcommittee expressed surprise to learn that there were hundreds of plants that had not been receiving daily inspection. Although agency officials have known this for years, we are not aware that FSIS administrators have ever informed Congress.

There are numerous reasons we believe it is essential for you implement immediately a reporting system to record whether and where daily inspections are occurring.

First, we disagree that this information is irrelevant to the agency’s management controls. We believe it is essential for the agency to determine if it is meeting its mandate under the federal inspection statutes. Your recent admission that hundreds of plants were not receiving daily inspection and the agency was forced to conduct a “survey” to reveal that information indicates to us that you do not have satisfactory management controls in place now.

Second, you are pushing ahead with a radical new inspection approach that will result in less inspection in at least some processing plants. You claim that the variation in inspection levels will be based on agency data of previous inspections at all plants nationwide. But it has become obvious that the agency cannot even determine what inspection personnel are doing now. With your current data management system, you cannot demonstrate that these plants have been receiving daily inspection, and you are not capable of demonstrating that they will receive daily inspection under a risk based inspection system, which has been your guarantee as you have tried to convince consumer organizations to accept your proposals.

Finally, it seems unconscionable that the agency is not collecting staffing information so that Congress is fully apprised of the agency’s activities and needs.

For all of these reasons, we urge the agency to take all appropriate measures to collect this basic and necessary information.

Should you have any questions regarding this matter, please feel free to contact me at (202) 797-6550.


Sincerely,


Wenonah Hauter
Executive Director


Cc:
Senator Tom Harkin, Chairman of Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
Senator Saxby Chambliss, Ranking Member of Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry
Senator Herb Kohl, Chairman of Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations
Senator Robert Bennett, Ranking Member of Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations
Representative Collin Peterson, Chairman of House Committee on Agriculture
Representative Robert Goodlatte, Ranking Member of House Committee on Agriculture
Representative Rosa DeLauro, Chairwoman of House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations
Representative Jack Kingston, Ranking Member of House Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies Appropriations