This week in the War on Workers: USDA wants to let more feces and tumors into your chicken

Here we go again with the USDA wanting to make it easier for poultry companies to give us salmonella:

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service wants to expand a pilot program in which inspectors examine 175 birds per minute, rather than the current rate of 35 birds per minute. A federal inspector remains part of the process in the pilot program, but only at the end of the poultry inspection line. Expansion of the program could result in the loss of up to 1,000 federal inspector jobs.

Allowing private poultry inspectors to check and discard carcasses earlier in the slaughter and production process could provide plants greater flexibility to develop their own procedures for condemning contaminated carcasses, the proposal said.

Yeah, right. It's just fine and dandy to weaken government inspection because the companies are going to police themselves. They'd never choose to sell a diseased or dangerous chicken for a little extra profit!

In reality, here's what the high-speed inspection would mean:

• Under traditional inspection methods, inspectors can see all sides (and the inside) of the bird. But inspectors at HIMP plants can only see the backside of the bird - not the front (where the breast meat is) that may clearly show tumors or scabs. Nor can HIMP inspectors see the inside of the bird, where fecal matter and other disease causing abnormalities are found.
• Under HIMP plans, federal inspectors are replaced with plant workers who are powerless to speak out against their employers, and are responsible for removing adulterated product. The inspector whistleblowers have witnessed that these sorters are "rebuked by supervisors" when they try to slow down the line for food safety concerns.

In addition to federal inspectors losing their jobs and consumers being sold birds with tumors, scabs, or fecal matter, the higher-speed lines would mean increased rates of repetitive motion injuries for poultry processing workers. It's a lose lose lose.