The meat and poultry industry has been under intense scrutiny about its food-safety practices for at least 20 years, driven by the notorious Jack in the Box E. coli incident 20 years ago. It led to a thick encyclopedia of new rules and regulations, as a seriously spooked industry and its government overseers found themselves questioning everything they had done until that seminal moment.
The most pronounced change was the introduction of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) principles in the late 1990s. The industry was already working on the concept in 1994, when the International HACCP Alliance was established to assist in its implementation.