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“This rule takes a small but important step to protect consumers. Outrageously, companies are now allowed to slap a “Product of USA” label on meat from other countries. In other words, a company can purchase meat that is a ‘Product of Brazil,’ put it in a new box, and call it ‘Product of USA.’ The current rules also allow a company to label ‘Product of USA’ meat from animals that have been imported from a foreign country. So, a cow that spends its entire life in Mexico, is given feed subject to Mexican feed regulations, and is treated with antibiotics and other medicines subject to Mexican drug regulations, could be shipped across the border and slaughtered the same day to make ground beef lawfully labeled ‘Product of USA.’

“USDA’s survey research shows that the vast majority of consumers have no idea that ‘Product of USA’ can apply to meat that’s actually from another country, or from animals raised or slaughtered in another country. This rule will better align the requirements for ‘Product of USA’ labeling with consumer expectations and common sense. However, USDA should go further. According to a survey commissioned by CFA, 88% of Americans favor requiring all beef and pork products to be labeled with information about the country where animals were born, raised and slaughtered. USDA should work with Congress and the U.S. Trade Representative to reinstate mandatory country-of-origin labeling rules for pork and beef products.”

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“These changes are long overdue and should help to better protect consumers,” said Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation of America. “The absence of a clear, overarching leader for the FDA foods program has undermined the agency’s organizational culture, its communications, its ability to attract resources, its partnerships with state and local regulators, and its responsiveness in a crisis. By giving one leader the power to set priorities within the foods program, and to direct resources accordingly, this reorganization will help the agency to break down the silos and hopefully, convince Congress to provide the funding needed to ensure a safe and healthy food supply for all Americans.

“The proposed reorganization responds to many of the concerns raised by CFA in testimony delivered before the Reagan-Udall Foundation’s expert panel last year. In particular, the new Office of Integrated Food Safety System Partnerships, should foster better coordination with state agencies, who often conduct food safety inspections on behalf of the FDA. The creation of a new center focused solely on nutrition is also very important, given the huge economic toll that diet-related disease is taking on U.S. consumers. The reorganization plan is not perfect. For example, the Center for Veterinary Medicine is still separate from the foods program, even though its regulation of areas like animal antibiotics greatly impacts the food system. Overall, however, this is an important first step towards greater accountability, transparency, and efficacy at FDA.”

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“This announcement represents a sea change in how poultry is inspected in the United States,” said Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation of America. “Rather than certifying a poultry processing establishment’s safety, FSIS will now certify the safety of each poultry product itself. And that’s what matters to consumers.”

FSIS will begin by declaring Salmonella an adulterant in breaded and stuffed raw chicken products. Never before has the agency considered Salmonella an adulterant in a raw chicken product, and the policy represents an important affirmation of the agency’s authority. Breaded raw chicken products have been implicated in 14 outbreaks since 1998, in part because so many consumers misunderstand their cooking requirements. The bigger public health impacts from the FSIS policy change, however, will follow from rules that apply to the broader universe of raw chicken products.

According to Deputy Under Secretary Eskin, FSIS will announce new rules that establish enforceable final product standards for raw poultry, in lieu of the performance standards that now apply to poultry processors. Under the current rules, a poultry processor may lawfully sell meat contaminated with high levels of virulent Salmonella, so long as weekly testing indicates that the prevalence of contamination in the plant is infrequent. Under a product-based standard, FSIS will define limits that prohibit certain types of Salmonella, levels of contamination, or both.  If Salmonella contamination on a product violates those limits, the product will be considered adulterated.

FSIS is also planning policy changes that may help to transform poultry supply chains, reducing the incidence of Salmonella in poultry before it comes through the slaughterhouse door. According to Eskin, the agency will propose testing requirements for incoming flocks of birds at each establishment. This testing could be used to identify flocks that harbor dangerous Salmonella strains, high levels of Salmonella contamination, or both, so that establishments can take added precautions to ensure the meat from these flocks is not adulterated, and work with partners further up the supply chain to reduce contamination at the source.

“Testing incoming birds is a critical element of a rational Salmonella control plan,” said Gremillion. “Salmonella is vertically transmitted. A single pedigree female chicken may have over three million offspring, and if that breeding hen is infected with a dangerous strain of Salmonella, it can spread throughout the food system and wreak havoc on public health.”

Supply chain controls feature prominently in a recent petition filed by CFA and consumer advocacy partners, including the Center for Science in the Public Interest. As noted in the petition, some of the most effective strategies for reducing Salmonella infections, such as vaccinating birds against the most dangerous strains of the bacteria, must be implemented “preharvest,” or before the birds are slaughtered. The experience of many European countries provides strong evidence that programs to control Salmonella in live poultry flocks will lead to significant declines in human Salmonella infections.

For now, many details remain to be determined. FSIS has yet to initiate formal rulemaking on any of the proposals discussed by Eskin, a process that normally takes years to complete. By starting with breaded and stuffed raw chicken products, the agency has chosen a high-risk but also very small product category.

“If FSIS wants to end decades of stalled progress on reducing foodborne illness, it will have to make rules that apply to all chicken, not just products that appear to be cooked,” said Gremillion. “But today’s announcement is an important step in the right direction.”

Contact: Thomas Gremillion, 803-447-6639

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CFA comments urge USDA’s FSIS to consider more fully the food safety implications of the proposed deregulation, and at the very least, to require supplier verification from processors that forego inspection for avian leukosis to demonstrate that precautions such as vaccines and biosecurity measures have been taken to prevent the occurrence of the disease.

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The final rule closely resembles FDA’s proposed rule, issued in 2020. CFA and other consumer groups voiced support for that proposal, noting in particular its potential to protect consumers from contaminated food imported from abroad. But the groups also urged FDA to require laboratory accreditation for the full range of testing undertaken to comply with regulatory requirements. In particular, they asked that FDA require accreditation where testing serves as a “corrective action,” following an unsatisfactory inspection. In other words, the rule should prevent a food company from using bogus test results as evidence of food safety, after a government inspection of the company’s facilities and records suggests otherwise.

Under the final rule, FDA will continue to allow companies to use unaccredited labs when taking corrective actions. However, the rule keeps the door open for FDA to expand the scope of its accreditation requirements. In the meantime, the rule establishes a common set of standards that food safety advocates hope will be adopted by a wide range of private laboratories, not just those conducting the tests covered by the rule.

“This rule represents a step forward towards safer food for consumers,” said Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation of America. “Most importantly, it strengthens the Import Alert system. By requiring importers to use accredited labs, it will help to avoid public health disasters like the multiple Salmonella outbreaks linked to imported Mexican papayas between 2011 and 2019. Nevertheless, the rule falls short of what Congress directed the agency to do in FSMA. FDA will now need to keep close watch of how the industry responds, particularly domestic food companies subject to corrective action and verification testing. If these companies continue to rely on unaccredited labs to satisfy regulatory requirements, the agency should not hesitate to exercise its full authority

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Rising numbers of foodborne illness infections attributable to poultry motivated the new policy. FSIS officials indicated that since 2012, levels of Salmonella contamination in poultry have dropped significantly. At the same time, however, the overall level of Salmonella infections has stayed the same, and infections attributable to poultry have risen by around 40%. In other words, while FSIS inspectors are finding fewer poultry samples that test positive for Salmonella, more people are getting salmonellosis from chicken and turkey.

That’s because not all Salmonella are equally dangerous. FSIS officials noted that there are over 2,500 Salmonella serotypes, and many of them rarely cause illness. FSIS performance standards for poultry processors, however, are based on the number of samples that test positive for any type of Salmonella species.

“The current performance standards fail to give poultry processors an incentive to distinguish between dangerous Salmonella and relatively innocuous serotypes,” said Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation of America. “They encourage processors to rely on interventions late in the production process, such as antimicrobial sprays, rather than investing in precautions upstream, such as vaccines for live birds.”

The proposed performance indicator would move U.S. poultry regulation closer to the approach taken by the European Union since 2003. There, regulators have defined targets for reducing the prevalence of a handful of Salmonella serotypes—those most associated with human illness—among live chicken and turkey populations. That policy has been credited with a significant reduction in human salmonellosis cases in EU member countries.

The proposed USDA FSIS policy does not go so far. It simply introduces a metric by which the agency can measure progress among the regulated industry writ large in reducing contamination by Salmonella serotypes most commonly associated with human illness. In its presentation to consumer stakeholders, the agency explained that it planned to use data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and its own testing program to define which serotypes to target. The agency explained that it will seek to reduce the proportion of samples testing positive for those serotypes each year. How the agency will seek to accomplish those reductions, however, remains to be determined.

“The proposed key performance indicator could give federal regulators a meaningful goal by which to measure progress towards reducing foodborne illness through meat and poultry inspection,” said Gremillion. “Ultimately, however, public policy must provide individual poultry producers with incentives to reduce the level of dangerous Salmonella contamination in their products. Simply setting goals is not enough. We know that from recent experience failing to meet the Healthy People 2020 targets for reducing foodborne illness. To actually reduce foodborne illness caused by poultry, we need enforceable, public-health based standards for processors.”

CFA and other consumer advocates recently petitioned USDA to develop such standards. Their petition also requests that USDA require poultry processors to adopt precautions to reduce food safety risk in their supply chains. Such a science-based approach, from farm to fork, will significantly reduce infections and improve public health, according to CFA and its co-petitioners.

Contact: Thomas Gremillion, 803-447-6639

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For its part, USDA issued a statement announcing “a top-to-bottom review of the ‘Product of USA’ label.” Secretary Vilsack acknowledged “concern that the voluntary ‘Product of USA’ label may confuse consumers,” but stopped short of committing to any specific reform to the label standards, such as a requirement it only apply to meat from animals born, raised, and slaughtered in the U.S.

“The FTC’s rule will help to protect consumers against deceptive marketing tactics that attempt to portray goods largely produced outside the country as American origin,” said Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation of America. “Unfortunately, consumers will still have to grapple with unscrupulous origin claims on beef and pork harvested from animals of foreign origin.”

Under current USDA rules, meat processed from a carcass shipped into the country from abroad may carry a “Product of USA” label. The same goes for meat from animals born and raised in Mexico or Canada, and transported into the U.S. for slaughter. This was not always the case. Prior to 2015, USDA required country-of-origin labeling for fresh beef and pork products, specifically labels indicating where the cow or pig was born, raised, and slaughtered. However, Congress repealed those requirements after Canada and Mexico successfully challenged the policy in the World Trade Organization.

“Thanks to an unaccountable, unelected international tribunal, federal policymakers have abandoned mandatory origin labeling on beef and pork,” said Gremillion. “But the WTO’s decision offers no excuse for failing to protect consumers from deceptive practices, or for neglecting to put in place standards for producers that voluntarily choose to label their products as U.S. origin. Consumers strongly support origin rules; in a 2017 poll commissioned by CFA, eighty-nine percent (89%) of a representative sample of 1000 adult Americans favored, either strongly or somewhat, requiring food sellers to indicate on the package label the country of origin of fresh meat they sell. USDA has the authority – and indeed the duty – to protect consumers from deceptive and misleading claims, including ‘product of USA’ claims on meat from animals that are not born, raised, and slaughtered in the USA.”

Contact: Thomas Gremillion, 202-939-1010

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The Safe Food Coalition comments urge USDA FSIS to implement the new testing protocol by December 1^st, 2020 (180 days from the date of the agency’s Notice), and to revise guidance to industry and directives to inspection personnel to clarify meatpackers’ obligations to test for and otherwise prevent non-O157 STEC contamination.

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A companion bill, H.R. 7521, was introduced in the House by Reps. Marcia Fudge (D-OH), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Bennie Thompson (D-MS) earlier this month. The Safe Line Speeds During COVID-19 Act is supported by a diverse coalition of groups including: the American Federation of Government Employees, National Employment Law Project, United Food & Commercial Workers International Union, Food & Water Watch, Consumer Federation of America, Center for Science in the Public Interest, American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®, Animal Equality, Farm Sanctuary, Humane Society Legislative Fund, Humane Society of the United States, and Mercy For Animals.

Regular line speeds are already dangerously fast and slaughter and processing workers and inspectors face many heightened job risks that can lead to severe injury, illness, and death. Increasing line speeds benefits meatpacking corporations at the expense of both animals and people, undermining necessary animal welfare and workforce protections that should be followed particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Slaughterhouses and processing plants have failed miserably to protect workers from the rapid spread of the novel coronavirus, resulting in more than 37,000 workers testing positive for the virus and over 160 workers and 4 inspectors having already died from COVID-19. Hyper-fast slaughter line speeds make it even harder for workers to maintain distance from each other and must be blocked immediately.

“Since mid-March, outbreaks of COVID-19 have continued to surge in meatpacking plants across the country, infecting tens of thousands of workers and tragically killing more than 168.  The majority of these workers are from immigrant communities and communities of color,” said Sen. Booker. “The situation has only worsened since the USDA has approved nearly 20 requests from meatpacking plants to exceed regulatory limits on line speeds despite the risks posed to workers, consumers, and animal welfare.  The USDA should be in the business of prioritizing worker and consumer safety over the profits of large multinational meatpacking corporations, not the other way around. The Safe Line Speeds in COVID-19 Act will rein in the USDA’s reckless oversight by limiting its ability to grant dangerous line speed waivers.”

COVID-19 has had a particularly severe impact on workers at slaughterhouses, where the virus has spread quickly and caused some plants to close temporarily. In the midst of the pandemic in April, the USDA approved a record number of waivers for poultry plants to start operating at breakneck line speeds, allowing them to slaughter up to 175 birds per minute, instead of the previously-allowed 140 birds per minute. A recent analysis by the National Employment Law Project found that the plants that received these waivers have all had records of severe injuries, have been cited for worker safety violations and/or have become COVID-19 hotspots.

In addition to prohibiting heightened line speeds during the COVID-19 crisis, the Safe Line Speeds During COVID-19 Act would also require the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a review of actions by the USDA and the U.S. Department of Labor in response to the pandemic to determine effectiveness of such actions in protecting animal, food and worker safety.

The coalition encourages members of the public to contact their U.S. senators and representatives to urge them to cosponsor the Safe Line Speeds During COVID-19 Act to protect animals, workers and the safety of our food system, and also contact the USDA to voice their opposition to higher line speeds.

Commentary from coalition members can be seen below:

“Under these new ‘modernized’ meat inspection systems, line speeds are increased and federal inspectors are removed from the slaughter lines while their duties are turned over to company employees. This puts meat companies in charge of their own food safety inspections, which is a recipe for disaster,” said Paula Schelling, Acting Chairperson of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals, American Federation of Government Employees. “Make no mistake, this isn’t about meeting higher food safety standards. It’s about moving product faster and cutting cost for the meat companies. This puts the safety of our food and the safety of employees at risk. We applaud Senator Booker and Representatives Fudge, DeLauro and Thompson for their leadership to put safety first during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“Faster slaughter speeds put animals at greater risk of being conscious as they are slaughtered, making it nearly impossible for plants to avoid horrific animal pain and suffering. These increased speeds also jeopardize worker and consumer health—all in the callous interest of profit at any cost,” said Matt Bershadker, ASPCA President and CEO. “By prohibiting extremely irresponsible speeds and requiring an official review of the USDA and Labor Department’s pandemic responses, the Safe Line Speeds During COVID-19 Act would better protect animals, workers, and the safety of our food system. We thank Senators Booker, Blumenthal, Feinstein, Harris, Merkley, Sanders, and Warren for their leadership on the line speed issue, and we urge Congress to pass this bill.”

“In quintessential Orwellian doublespeak, the USDA claims speeding up slaughter lines has no impact on animal welfare or worker safety, when all evidence and common sense indicates the opposite is true,” said Sarah Hanneken, Legal Advocacy Counsel at Animal Equality. “This bill is crucial to stop the USDA from gaslighting the public in service of the meat industry.”

“The USDA has done too little to protect federal inspectors and workers during the coronavirus pandemic. Rather than slow the slaughter lines to reduce worker crowding, the agency has pressed forward with programs allowing for even higher speed slaughter,” said Sarah Sorscher, Deputy Director for Regulatory Affairs at Center for Science in the Public Interest. “This bill takes the reasonable step of hitting ‘pause’ on the agency’s high-speed slaughter initiatives at least until the COVID-19 public health emergency has been brought under control.”

“USDA itself has acknowledged that higher line speeds contribute to more foodborne illness risk,” said Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation of America. “While COVID-19 is posing an unprecedented challenge to the workers and inspectors responsible for keeping food safe, slower line speeds are critical.”

“Speeding up the slaughterhouse assembly line exacerbates intolerable animal suffering, and threatens both consumer and worker health. The factory farm system needs to be held to account, and we are grateful for Senators Booker, Blumenthal, Feinstein, Harris, Merkley, Sanders, and Warren, and Representatives Fudge, DeLauro and Thompson’s efforts to curtail their inhumane and irresponsible conduct,” said Gene Baur, President and Co-Founder, Farm Sanctuary.

“This bill will address several concerns that we at Food & Water Watch have had with recent actions taken by USDA. We have had strong reservations about the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System that reduces government oversight of hog slaughter; we have long opposed the increase in line speeds in all meat and poultry facilities; we have advocated for an independent investigation into the haphazard approach USDA has taken to its response to the COVID-19 pandemic which has placed facility workers and its own employees at great risk. We applaud Senator Booker and his Senate colleagues who have joined Representative Marcia Fudge and 25 House members — who have introduced similar legislation in the House — for taking the leadership on this issue and we will work for this important bill’s provisions enactment into law,” said Tony Corbo, Sr. Government Affairs Representative for Food & Water Watch/Food & Water Action.

“In an abrogation of duty unimaginable to Americans seeing a surge in coronavirus cases, USDA increased slaughterhouse line speeds, putting workers, consumers and animals at even greater risk in a shameless sop to industrial agriculture,” said Sara Amundson, President of Humane Society Legislative Fund. “The bill sponsors are right to shine a spotlight on what can only be characterized as abject cruelty, and we urge Congress to swiftly enact their critical legislation.”

“Even before the COVID-19 crisis, slaughter facilities were among the most dangerous places to work in America, and the extreme pressure of the production line yielded unacceptable cruelties and contamination,” said Kitty Block, President and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States. “Dialing up line speeds that are already lightning fast is a recipe for disaster for workers, food safety and animal welfare.”

“High speed slaughter systems – which allow for line speeds as fast as 175 chickens killed per minute at poultry plants and an estimated 1,300 pigs killed per hour at pork plants — put profits over animal welfare, worker safety, and human health. Now is the time to look ahead, and we commend Senator Booker and Representatives Fudge, DeLauro and Thompson for their leadership to address this long overdue problem,” said AJ Albrecht, Director of Government Affairs at Mercy For Animals, which recently released hidden camera footage, recorded by a Mercy For Animals investigator, that reveals the dangers of high-speed live-shackle slaughter: www.highspeedcruelty.com.

“More than 37,000 meat and poultry workers have already been infected with COVID-19, and overwhelming evidence shows that allowing meat and poultry processing plants to operate with faster line speeds will dramatically worsen the already unsafe working conditions in these plants,” said Shayla Thompson, Government Affairs Manager with the National Employment Law Project. “Meat and poultry workers are disproportionally Black people, Latinx people, and immigrants, and employers’ failure to ensure workers’ safety means that COVID-19 is needlessly spreading through communities of color at rapid rates. This bill will ensure that the USDA stops enabling the exploitation of these essential workers, and instead prioritizes their health and safety during this devastating pandemic.”

“America’s meatpacking workers have been on the frontlines of this pandemic since day one, putting themselves in harm’s way to make sure our families have the food we need. As COVID-19 continues to put our country’s meatpacking workers at risk, we must take action to reduce line speeds in these plants to ensure workers can maintain social distancing and stay safe on the job,” said United Food and Commercial Workers International Vice President Ademola Oyefeso. “This bill is a critical step to reining in the dangerously fast line speeds at so many meatpacking plants and will put the safety of workers and our country’s food supply first. Congress must pass this vital legislation immediately.”

Contact: Thomas Gremillion, 202-939-1010

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