Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent its benighted poultry-processing rule to the White House for final review. The millions of consumers who eat undercooked chicken at their peril and the beleaguered workers in these dank, overcrowded, and dangerous plants can only hope the President’s people come to their senses over there and kill this misguided fiasco.
Ordinarily, we would have hoped that newly installed Department of Labor secretary Tom Perez would have put his foot down before USDA proceeded with the final rule, but after months of pleas from the National Council of La Raza, African American labor advocates, trade unions, and consumer groups across the spectrum, he has remained aloof. Apparently, the economic needs of multi-billion dollar poultry processing companies that have brought us salmonella outbreak after salmonella outbreak will once again trump the needs of the consumers and workers, especially Hispanic and African American workers who, if they are lucky, manage to avoid cutting themselves too often on crowded assembly lines only to succumb to crippling ergonomic injuries a few years down the road.
USDA claims that the rule will “modernize” the food safety system with respect to poultry grown and slaughtered in the U.S. This claim has got to be one of the greatest misrepresentations launched by the government so far this year. Instead, the rule makes a pair of very bad changes that benefit an industry undeserving of the public’s trust: (1) it pulls hundreds of federal inspectors off the line at poultry plants so they won’t be able to check birds for feces, blood, and feathers and (2) it allows chicken producers like Foster Farms, Perdue, and Pilgrim’s Pride to speed the line up from 50-70 birds/minute to 175—or close to three birds every second.
In place, the rule imposes two laughable substitutes. The first is self-regulation by the chicken companies. USDA doesn’t tell the companies what to test, how often to test, or what to do with test results, but rather leaves it up to each plant’s managers to decide whether consumers and workers will be at too much “risk.” Second, workers paid subsistence wages would assume the inspector’s responsibilities, but the rule doesn’t require any training on how they might approach that critical job. At three birds a second, and with the added job of hanging and processing the carcasses as they whip by, the idea that workers can do anything other than get hurt worse is quite remarkable.
USDA claims that the new system has been proven safe in a series of pilot projects conducted over the last several years. Yet the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has written two scathing reports on the scant data used in promulgating the rule and the Southern Poverty Law Center has released reports documenting the already harrowing musculoskeletal injuries poultry workers are subjected to.
The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) has long claimed that it reviews rules objectively, on their merits, and it is especially proud of its role in convening other agencies within the government that might have concerns about a rule to make sure their concerns are reflected in the final product. It’s already quite late in the day, but we urge Howard Shelanski, head of OIRA, to call up Tom Perez and Occupational Safety and Healthy Administration chief David Michaels to ask why the rule does not protect poultry workers. We suspect that the answer is that USDA Secretary Vilsack has already overridden any concerns the worker safety experts thought to raise. In that case, the only potential source of salvation would be the Domestic Policy Council—is anyone over there more in touch with the human face of this fiasco, not to mention the political demographics of USDA’s misguided choices?
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Rena Steinzor | January 13, 2014
Today, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) sent its benighted poultry-processing rule to the White House for final review. The millions of consumers who eat undercooked chicken at their peril and the beleaguered workers in these dank, overcrowded, and dangerous plants can only hope the President’s people come to their senses over there and kill this […]
Joseph Tomain | January 8, 2014
In his 2013 book, The Bet, Yale historian Paul Sabin uses Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon as foils to explain today’s dysfunctional and polarized politics surrounding energy development and environmental protection. In 1980, Ehrlich and Simon bet each other on the price of five minerals (chromium, copper, nickel, tin, and tungsten.) Ehrlich, a neo-Malthusian, and father […]
Lisa Heinzerling | January 6, 2014
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently recommitted itself to its lame proposal to address the profligate use of antibiotics in livestock by enlisting the voluntary participation of the drug companies that make the antibiotics. Two documents issued last month reveal the details of the agency’s current plans. The first is a final guidance document […]
Daniel Farber | January 2, 2014
Has the U.S. “exported” its carbon emissions to China by relying on China to manufacture so many of our goods? There seems to be growing support for the idea that carbon emissions should be tied to consumption of goods rather than their manufacture, as the NY Times reported recently. There is a grain of truth to […]
Wendy Wagner | December 30, 2013
Some members of Congress apparently do not want agencies to regulate powerful agricultural and pharmaceutical interests in order to protect the public from dangerous risks. Yet, rather than say that — and be held accountable to the electorate for the consequences — they have developed what has become a standard, indeed almost boilerplate pretext to […]
Erin Kesler | December 23, 2013
Climate change and pollution affects everyone. Global warming-induced hurricanes pummel our coasts and droughts ravage our farmland. Our neighbors, friends, and children develop asthma and heart attacks because of air pollution and our favorite parks and hunting grounds are withering away. The science is conclusive and polls reflect the concern of many Americans about global warming and […]
Celeste Monforton | December 19, 2013
Many Senate Democrats try to paint themselves as defenders of working people. They rail against their colleagues who are “in the pockets of corporations and the rich.” But what they say, and what they do are two different things. This time, seven Democratic Senators are ready to screw poultry workers to please the owners of […]
James Goodwin | December 19, 2013
It’s like a Russian nesting doll of bad policy: House Republicans have contrived to take one of the most anti-science bills in memory and then place it inside one of the most anti-democratic legislative vehicles available. It’s part of an attempt to ram through into law new rulemaking requirements that would benefit the already-healthy bottom […]
Rena Steinzor | December 17, 2013
Recently, the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) adopted a statement on how to improve the “timeliness” of rule reviews by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). As regular readers know, OIRA has time and again delayed the release of crucial health, safety, and environmental regulations, leaving the public exposed […]