The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is empowered with numerous enforcement tools by the federal laws it implements. These include administrative actions such as suspension of inspection or product detention, civil injunctions to restrain violations of the acts and criminal enforcement against both companies and responsible individuals.
In our experience, FSIS has not typically relied on civil injunctions as an enforcement tool. Typically, if the agency is faced with a set of circumstances in which an establishment has repeat violations and those problems persist despite promises to abate the alleged violations, the agency would consider withdrawal of inspection services or possibly referring the matter to the Department of Justice for criminal enforcement. In contrast, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commonly uses civil injunctions as part of its enforcement approach with facilities.