CapitalPress.com 11
Friday, January 24, 2020
Livestock
Consumer groups sue USDA over new swine inspections
to serious health threats like
salmonella,” Zach Corrigan,
senior staff attorney for Food
& Water Watch, said.
“The USDA is letting the
wolf guard the hog house,”
he said.
A spokesman for FSIS
told Capital Press the agency
can’t comment on pending
litigation.
The agency did, however,
provide comment to Capi-
tal Press for a recent article
involving the new inspection
system.
According to FSIS, the
final rule on the new system
has two parts — mandatory
microbial testing require-
ments for swine establish-
ments and the New Swine
Slaughter Inspection Sys-
tem. Establishments can
choose to operate under
NSIS or remain under the
traditional slaughter inspec-
tion system.
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Food & Water Watch and
the Center for Food Safety
have filed a lawsuit against
USDA over the agency’s
New Swine Inspection Sys-
tem that went into effect in
December.
The activist groups allege
the new system is contrary
to the Federal Meat Inspec-
tion Act of 1906, which
required meat inspectors
with the Food Safety and
Inspection Service to exam-
ine every animal before and
after slaughter.
They allege the new rules
prevent such inspections and
hand over those responsibil-
ities to slaughter companies.
“The new rules curtail the
ability of federal inspectors
to detect serious food-safety
problems and expose those
who consume pork products
Capital Press File
Two activist groups have filed a lawsuit challenging
the USDA’s system of inspecting hogs at the slaughter
house.
Under both traditional
inspection
and
NSIS,
FSIS inspectors will con-
duct 100% ante-mortem
inspection and 100% car-
cass-by-carcass inspection.
FSIS inspectors are posi-
but China
kept many
other restric-
tions on U.S.
beef. Those
included
bans on pro-
Kent Bacus d u c t i o n
technology,
such as hormones and beta
agonists, the BSE-related
30-month age limit on cat-
tle slaughtered for beef and
bookend traceability, he said.
“We still face really sig-
nificant non-science-based,
non-tariff trade barriers,” Jen-
nifer Houston, NCBA presi-
dent, said.
But the phase one agree-
ment will get rid of a lot of
those restrictions and allow
the U.S. to sell high-quality
beef in China, she said.
When Chinese consumers
get a taste of U.S. beef, “this
market is absolutely going to
explode and be such a posi-
tive event for all of America’s
beef producers,” she said.
U.S. beef exports to China
have been limited, totaling
$30 million in 2017, $60 mil-
lion in 2018 and $70 mil-
lion from January through
November in 2019, Bacus
said.
Although the phase one
trade deal with China doesn’t
address tariffs on U.S. beef,
significant ground was gained
on non-tariff barriers to Chi-
nese markets.
The National Cattlemen’s
Beef Association is going
over the details of the agree-
ment signed on Jan. 15, but
the provisions it has seen are
“very positive” and address a
lot of the things NCBA asked
for, Kent Bacus, NCBA senior
director of international trade
and market access, said.
“This is a truly momen-
tous day for the U.S. beef
industry and National Cat-
tlemen’s Beef Association,”
he said in a telephone confer-
ence with the media.
U.S. beef had been locked
out of China since 2003,
following the detection of
bovine spongiform encepha-
lopathy in a Washington state
dairy cow, until the industry
gained hard-fought but lim-
ited access in 2017.
That access was a result
of President Donald Trump
making it a top agenda item
at the Mar-a-Lago Summit,
The lawsuit also states the
new system lifts prior lim-
its on slaughter line speeds
allowing plants to move
carcasses past inspectors at
speeds that impede the crit-
ical appraisal of carcasses
and parts.
Line speeds are based on
a plant’s equipment, size,
condition of the animals, the
ability to maintain control
for pathogens and the num-
ber of employees trained to
perform sorting activities,
according to FSIS.
FSIS inspectors have the
authority to slow and stop
the line to ensure food safety
and inspection are achieved,
the agency said.
Corrigan said the agency
predicts a 12.5% increase
in line speeds. With a 40%
decrease in online inspectors,
it’ll reduce average inspector
time dedicated to performing
a critical appraisal.
Ranchers welcome NEPA modernization
Beef secures wins in China agreement
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
tioned within a few feet of
the establishment sorters and
able to see everything the
plant employees do, FSIS
stated.
Corrigan, however, said
the Federal Meat Inspec-
tion Act requires more
than inspector presence.
It requires the “critical
appraisal” of animals before
slaughter and carcass and
parts afterwards.
“Our lawsuit details how
under NSIS, federal inspec-
tors are precluded and pre-
vented from performing such
a critical appraisal,” he said.
FSIS earlier stated if
FSIS inspectors find per-
sistent defects when they are
inspecting carcasses, they
will take appropriate action
such as stopping the produc-
tion line or issuing noncom-
pliance records, or both.
The consumer groups also
contend the new rules fail
to require any training for
plant employees, saying the
agency’s cost-benefit analy-
sis estimates companies will
only spend the equivalent
of four hours training their
employees.
That’s compared to last
year’s exports of $1.8 billion
to Japan and $1.7 billion to
South Korea — both much
smaller countries than China,
he said.
“So we had a lot of unmet
potential due to a lot of these
non-tariff trade barriers,” he
said.
Phase one of the trade
agreement lifts the BSE-re-
lated age restriction and rec-
ognizes the U.S. traceabil-
ity system. In addition, China
will establish maximum resi-
due levels for three hormones
commonly used in the U.S.
for decades consistent with
Codex standards.
China will also use max-
imum residue levels estab-
lished by other countries
for substances where Codex
standards do not exist and
will conduct a risk assess-
ment for ractopamine, a
beta agonist used in cattle
and swine in the U.S., con-
sistent with international
guidelines.
While NCBA will con-
tinue to work on the beta ago-
nist issue, the provisions on
hormones, traceability and
age limits are huge wins,
Houston said.
By CAROL RYAN DUMAS
Capital Press
Ranchers seeking to
renew their grazing permits
on federal lands or make
improvements on their
allotments have long been
stymied by the National
Environmental Policy Act,
signed into law in 1970.
A proposed rule by the
Trump
administration,
however, might lessen the
load of what has become a
lengthy and costly approval
process to run livestock on
public range.
NEPA requires fed-
eral agencies to assess the
environmental impacts of
proposed major federal
actions as part of their deci-
sion-making. The process
can impact a wide vari-
ety of projects, including
the construction of roads,
bridges, highways and air-
ports; water infrastruc-
ture; energy projects; and
land, forest and fishery
management.
Over time, NEPA has
become increasingly com-
plex and time-consuming
for federal agencies, project
applicants, and Americans
seeking permits or approv-
als from the federal gov-
ernment, according to the
administration’s Council on
Environmental Quality.
CEQ, which is propos-
ing changes to NEPA, has
found the average environ-
mental impact statement is
more than 600 pages and
it takes federal agencies an
average of 4 1/2 years to
complete a NEPA review.
For
ranchers
con-
ducting an environmen-
tal impact statement, that
means they’re 4 1/2 years
into what is a 10-year-term
grazing permit, Tanner
Beymer, associate director
of the Public Lands Coun-
cil, said in the latest “Belt-
way Beef” podcast.
“It’s absolutely ridicu-
lous. There’s no reason it
should take that long under
any circumstance,” he said.
The proposed changes
to NEPA are supposed
to address that so people
aren’t spending so much
time putting together giant
document — “which, real-
istically only serve as the
basis for litigation later on
down the road,” he said.
Litigation opportunities
are not the intended or sole
value of an EIS document,
he told Capital Press.
“However, the size and
massive scope of EIS doc-
uments provide a litany of
opportunities for potential
litigants to challenge fed-
eral decisions in court,” he
said.
Page and time limits for
NEPA documents under
the proposed rule will help
federal agencies focus
their attention on the more
direct effects of any pro-
posed action, which in turn
reduces opportunities to
bring lawsuits, he said.
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