In October 2015, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) announced a Regional Emphasis Program (REP) mandating comprehensive inspections at poultry-processing facilities. As the program was being implemented, the poultry industry expressed a concern about one narrow aspect of the program which we believed created Constitutional concerns.
As background, most of OSHA’s regular activities involve “programmed inspections,” and OSHA is required to use an administratively neutral selection process to randomly choose where inspections will be conducted. This eliminates any concerns about the agency using an arbitrary or punitive selection process and works quite well. This administratively neutral process must also be applied to select poultry facilities to be inspected under the REP.