Final HACCP Compliance Guidelines Released by FSIS

  On May 15^th, 2015, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued its final Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) Compliance Guideline for systems validation.  The release of the Compliance Guideline comes after many revisions since the first proposal back in March 2010. 

   FSIS’s Compliance Guideline was issued with the goal of providing assistance to companies, especially small meat and poultry plants, to meet the validation standards required for HACCP systems under 9 Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) 417.4.  Validation of a HACCP system is the process of demonstrating through data that the system in place will be able to adequately control any identifiable hazards to produce a safe, unadulterated product.

  According to FSIS, compliance guidelines were necessary because many establishments were failing to adequately validate their HACCP systems.   Significantly,“[i]n 2012, FSIS concluded that E. coli (non-O157) positives likely occurred because of improperly designed interventions." Similarly, FSIS determined that "an outbreak involving chicken pot pies in 2007 and a 2011 outbreak from turkey burgers may have occurred because of improperly validated cooking instructions.”

  Companies now have the opportunity to immediately incorporate the issued compliance guidelines with their existing HACCP system.  FSIS stated that after January 4, 2016 it will begin checking large establishments to determine if they have met validation requirements under 9 CFR 417.4. Smaller establishments will have until April 4^th, 2016, before inspections begin.  According to FSIS, the time frame is provided to allow establishments the opportunity to collect all the data necessary to meet the validation standards.  

Written by Katharine Richter - Research Assistant

June 4th, 2015 

Government Accountability Office Releases Report on USDA Poultry Inspection Modernization

In August, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released its report on food safety and the impact of new slaughter inspection procedures for poultry and hog inspections introduced in USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) pilot projects. The GAO had three objectives: (1) to determine the extent to which USDA has evaluated their pilot projects, (2) to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the pilot projects based on reviews by stakeholders, and (3) to determine the extent to which USDA disclosed any limitations in sources it relied upon to develop its proposed rule for the modernization of poultry slaughter inspections.

The USDA pilot projects were designed to take a new approach to slaughter inspections by initiating a risk-based, preventative, Hazard Analysis Critical Control Points (HACCP) approach. The new procedures would eliminate FSIS inspectors from slaughter lines in order to free the inspectors to perform additional food safety and quality checks in high risk areas of the plant and place responsibility on industry to perform HACCP analysis.  The pilot projects, which were negotiated and started at twenty young chicken plants, five young turkey plants, and five young hog plants in 1998, are known as the HACCP-based Inspection Modules Projects (HIMP).

The USDA proposed rule for optional new poultry inspections is based on the pilot projects with some modifications. The GAO concludes that the proposed rule needs changes before finalization because USDA/FSIS has not thoroughly evaluated the three pilot projects. It states that the FSIS data analysis has limitations because the data was not designed to be comparable due to the age of the data and because the data was not compared uniformly among different plants, and data from the hog plants has not been evaluated, among other named concerns. The GAO recommends that the USDA clearly disclose to the public limitations in the information the agency relied on for rulemaking and to collect and analyze the information collected for young hogs to determine whether the pilot project is meeting its purpose. The USDA concurred with the GAO recommendations.

Please visit the GAO webpage for the full report.

Written by Sarah L. Doyle - Research Assistant
The Agricultural Law Resource and Reference Center
@PSUAgLawCenter
September 5, 2013

Judge Temporarily Halts the Opening of Horse Slaughterhouses in New Mexico and Iowa

On August 2, U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo issued a temporary restraining order against two slaughterhouses, in Iowa and New Mexico, which were set to begin the slaughter of horses next week.  The lawsuit, brought by the Humane Society of the United States, and several other organizations, contended that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) failed to do the proper environmental impact studies before issuing the permits which would allow the companies in Iowa and New Mexico to open the horse slaughterhouses.  The injunction will remain in place for 30 days, after which the court will decide whether to extend the order for a longer period of time.

The USDA gave these slaughterhouses the go-ahead to begin horse slaughter in June.  According to the USDA, Congress prohibited the use of Federal funding for equine slaughter inspections in 2006, but did not continue the prohibition in its FY 2012 Agriculture Appropriations Act (Pub. L. 112-55).  Therefore, if a slaughterhouse meets all FSIS regulations for equine slaughter, the FSIS must grant Federal inspection to the facility.

For more information, please see the USDA’s Humane Slaughter page or FSIS’ Information Regarding Horse Slaughter page.

Written By Gaby Gilbeau – Research Assistant

The Agricultural Law Resource and Reference Center

@PSUAgLawCenter

August 6, 2013