As the meat processing industry continues to change and modernize, the government agency that has been tasked with monitoring it has had to change as well. The Food Safety and Inspection Service, part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, periodically announces changes to the way that meat processing plants are monitored. The New Swine Slaughter Inspection System would be such a change. Following up on the previous efforts to modernize poultry inspection, NSIS rolled out a series of proposed mandatory and optional changes to the inspection of hog processing plants. Carmen Rottenberg, acting Depute Under Secretary, Office of Food Safety, and Paul Kiecker, Acting Administrator, Office of the Administrator, were on hand at the 2018 IPPE in Atlanta, Ga., to discuss the proposal. They also discussed the issues of regulating small establishments without over-regulating them out of business.
The FSIS’ stated goal is to modernize inspection. How does this new proposal play into that?