Trial US Meat Inspection System Fails Overseas

Kimberly Kindy of The Washington Post recently spoke in an expositional video on the newspaper’s website about a pilot meat inspection program instituted by the United States that reduces the number of government food inspectors by nearly 50 percent while extraditing the processing operation. The program was implemented by Canada, Australia, and New Zealand as a way to give them “equivalency status,” or an approval from the federal government to export their meat to the US. Kindy reports that the system has yielded inconsistent results, and tainted beef products laden with bacteria have arrived at American ports and borders. The Post reporter notes that two of the main problems with this foreign meat inspection program are that it allows plant workers to do the inspections rather than impartial third parties and the sped-up production system hinders quality control.