How much information about HACCP and ISO is Enough?

The Role of Transparency in Recalls

Keeping the public safe is the goal of regulatory inspection. This includes keeping the public informed to make good educated decisions regarding its own health. Since the Sept. 11th attacks, this has included food security as well.

Neither food safety nor food security will be effective without more of a commitment to transparency on the part of establishments. Two questions should be answered: 1) has the establishment supplied regulators with information regarding a possible pathogen threat? 2) Is the process under control in the face of an imminent threat due to a pathogen? For the answers to these questions to be “yes” transparency is a must. If the answer is “no”, sooner or later the end result of a process out of control and the existence of the imminent threat to the public is a recall.

Recalls are carried out when all other inspection enforcement activities have failed. It is the last step that inspectors, both in the field and administratively, can take to fully protect the consumer. With a more solid commitment, adulterated food may never leave an establishment and that last step may not be necessary. In that vein, HACCP and ISO (if it is being used) will be working to the fullest extent possible. At this point in time a recall also may be the only thing that protects the majority of the consumers in the event of a foodborne attack from terrorists. With the use of transparency, that tainted substance might not even leave the establishment where it was produced. Further, if a terrorist did not attack at an establishment, transparency can allow a successful investigation of what step in the chain terrorists did taint the food supply.

The time for “us vs. them” is over. Industry has as much responsibility to the public as regulators do. Under HACCP, establishments have an excellent opportunity to prove they are living up to their responsibilities. For example, according to Thomas Billy, in “Inaccuracies in News Articles Concerning the Decision by US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in Supreme Beef Processing, Inc., vs. USDA,” pathogen reduction monitoring and sampling will continue, establishments are given the opportunity to correct any sanitation and food safety deficiencies that they have. Under the Rules of Practice, 9 CFR 500, the only reason that an establishment’s operations will cease would be under the drastic measures. Most of the time, under the Rules of Practice, regulators allow establishments time to get their processes back under control. Establishments must realize that part of the regulators’ job is to ensure establishments are following their HACCP and SSOP plans and performing the pathogen reduction standards.

Establishments must not view what regulators do as harassment but should understand their responsibility to the public. It is disturbing that even our court system doesn’t realize this responsibility of industry and that they allowed operation in the face of repeated failures of the Pathogen Performance Standards in the Supreme Beef case, and that there would have been a court decision to keep a plant in operation after repeated failures, as in the case Nebraska Beef, Inc., where nine inspectors and the USDA were sued for “harassment”, had Dr. McKee, then Administrator of the USDA, not stepped in to negotiate with all parties.

What this means is that while the USDA is committed to ensuring industry produces safe, wholesome, unadulterated product and in some cases, industry doesn’t seem to make that same commitment, nor do they have the same level of transparency. The two lawsuits certainly have demonstrated that, but also in the case of the statement of the American Meat Institute that USDA shouldn’t punish plants making efforts. Sometimes what the establishment calls “making efforts” and how the regulations say that an establishment should make those efforts are two different things. It is not enough, for example, to grab a mop to wipe down condensation that is there. How is that going to be prevented from occurring in the future? What steps are being taken to ensure that pipes are better insulated or that sweating doesn’t occur or that the ceiling is impervious to moisture, as the regulations say in 416.2 (d)?