Privatized Inspection Plants Still Turning Out More Contaminated Chicken

Washington, D.C. – Based on data recently released by USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), and information secured through the Freedom of Information Act, (FOIA), advocacy group Food & Water Watch today revealed that chicken slaughter plants that converted to the privatized inspection model, the New Poultry Inspection System (NPIS), continued to show a greater likelihood of failing the government’s performance standard for Salmonella than plants still using the traditional inspection model. The most recent data show virtually no improvement in the track record for these plants since Food & Water Watch first began tracking this trend in January of this year.

“At the time NPIS was proposed in 2012, USDA officials claimed that the privatized inspection scheme would reduce pathogen levels in poultry. It seems that the opposite is happening,” said Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director for Food & Water Watch. “Some of the big players in poultry processing have chosen to go down the deregulation route, and it appears that they cannot be trusted to police themselves. It’s time for FSIS to stop the conversion of any additional plants because the agency’s own data shows that NPIS is not delivering safer food.”

Plants that use NPIS are staffed with fewer USDA inspectors on the slaughter line, and most of the inspection duties are transferred to company employees. Under traditional inspection, there can be as many as four government inspectors assigned to a slaughter line with each inspector responsible for evaluating up to 35 carcasses per minute. Under NPIS, there is only one government inspector assigned to the slaughter line and he or she is responsible for inspecting up to three birds per second.

On September 14, FSIS posted its most recent regulatory Salmonella testing data for poultry carcasses by plant.

Of a total of 205 chicken plants listed, 189 plants had enough data to evaluate whether they met the Salmonella performance standard. According to the USDA data:

• Thirty-four plants failed the Salmonella performance standard.
  • Sixteen of these plants had already converted to NPIS; an additional two were on the list to convert in the future. 
  • Eighteen of the plants that failed the performance standard were using the traditional inspection model.
• Fifty-five chicken plants had converted to NPIS as of May 2018.[1]
  • Nearly a third of the NPIS plants (29%) failed the Salmonella performance standard as opposed to 13% of the 134 non-NPIS plants that failed the standard.

According to the data released by the USDA and obtained by Food & Water Watch, the NPIS plants that failed the Salmonella performance standard are:

*Requested conversion

Food & Water Watch filed a lawsuit in 2014 trying to stop the implementation of NPIS. The lawsuit was rejected because the courts claimed that Food & Water Watch did not have standing to file the litigation.

“We will continue to monitor the implementation of NPIS and report whether its food safety objectives are being met. Inexplicably, USDA is now proposing this same inspection model in hog slaughter, and we believe that it will not deliver improved food safety. Instead, it will be a gift to industry as inspection is further deregulated and more consumers will be put at risk,” concluded Hauter.

Food & Water Watch champions healthy food and clean water for all. We stand up to corporations that put profits before people, and advocate for a democracy that improves people’s lives and protects our environment.

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Contact: Darcey Rakestraw, 202-683-2467; [email protected]

[1] May 2018 is the most recent data Food & Water Watch has received from FSIS on plants that had converted or waiting to convert to NPIS. FSIS has failed to respond to additional FOIA requests filed by Food & Water Watch for June, July and August, 2018.