[ad_1]
(KXAN / CNN) – A consumer rights group is asking the government to oblige meat distributors to put a message on the food they send to grocery stores: "May contain feces".
Kidding or not, the PCRM has real concerns about the food safety inspection system of the US Department of Agriculture.
The US Department of Agriculture said it was implementing a "zero tolerance policy for fecal matter in meat and poultry".
The USDA said it was sending inspectors to facilities that control a large amount of selected meat throughout the day. If inspectors discover faeces on an animal carcass, they ensure that contaminated meat can not enter the food supply, said the USDA.
The PCRM lawyer, however, stated that the USDA's current inspection policy was not sufficient, as it only applied to faecal matter "visible" on the production line.
In addition, the USDA has relaxed its rules on the speed at which poultry companies can treat birds. The requirement was 140 birds per minute, but was raised to 175 birds per minute.
This gives line workers about three birds to scan per second – a rate deemed too fast to see feces.
For at least six years, the PCRM has been asking questions about feces in birds and has recently commenced legal action in the Federal District Court in Washington, DC.
"Nobody wants to eat faeces," says PCRM's lawyer Deborah Press.
However, the problem is not limited to exhaustion: microbes such as E. coli are found in feces.
Despite these concerns, they say they do not receive government responses regarding their food inspection procedures.
In 2013, PCRM sent a petition to the USDA asking it to change its rules on faecal contamination.
During a test of chicken products, the PCRM revealed that 48% of the meat was tested positive for faecal contamination.
The PCRM filed an application under the Freedom of Information Act in 2017, requesting "records regarding the number of USDA poultry inspectors, the detection rates of visible fecal contamination from the poultry, the average speed of poultry supply chains, the USDA poultry inspection rates and inspection training ".
Their lawsuit indicates that the USDA has violated the act by not responding to the request. Federal law requires agencies to respond to FOIA requests within 20 days of receipt, according to the Digital Media Law Project.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for the Department of Agriculture told CNN that the USDA could not comment on an ongoing dispute.
According to the PCRM, the requirement for "visible" faecal contamination conceals what happens in chickens during the lineage.
The group quotes an unnamed federal inspector who told them:
"We often see birds come down with intestines still covered in faecal contamination.If there is no faecal contamination on the skin of the bird, we can not do anything for it though. To avoid following that line. "
The bird would then enter a water tank, where the remaining faeces could be washed away and could be deposited on other bird carcasses in the tank. The inspector said that it was sometimes a "faecal soup".
According to the press, the complaint will hardly stand up in the courts, but it believes that changes are possible.
[ad_2]
Source link