Food safety inspectors

Since SYSCO does not itself manufacture, a quality assurance team of more than 180 professionals determines specifications for each own-brand item and also sets criteria for raw materials and for the standards that manufacturers and processors must follow for food safety, quality, and consistency, as well as for social responsibility and supplier codes of conduct. This quality assurance team identifies and establishes supply sources and audits those suppliers to enforce SYSCO s strict standards for various factors like facility conditions and sanitary measures. Inspectors are at the plants as bacon comes off the production line, or follow produce from field to cooler to assure proper holding temperatures and product integrity. SYSCO s program is unmatched in the food industry. The number of people and level of resources committed to supporting the integrity of the products are far superior to those of other industry competitors, who may devote merely a handful of personnel to these tasks, if they are undertaken at all. 

With an annual budget of about 300 million, OSHA is about five percent the size of the Enviroiunental Protection Agency (Salwen 1993). The federal government has six times more fish and game inspectors than health and safety inspectors (Ball 1992). As demonstrated in the Inq)erial Food Product s fire, OSHA frequently steps in only after a disaster. One might believe the limited federal commitment to worker health and safety would lead to a vast and expanding frequency of workplace accidents and diseases. As shown in Figure 1.1 the frequency of workplace deaths as measured by National Safety Council statistics has declined dramatically over the last 64 years. In 1928, for every 1(X),(XX) workers there were 15.8 workplace fatalities. By 1992 the rate of fatalities had fallen by about 80 percent to 3.3 per... 

The FDA Food Code outlines specific rules on which state and connty health departments model their retail food regulations. Healthcare organizations can experience health inspections conducted by federal, state, or local officials. Most food inspectors possess a college degree and understand food quality standards, maintenance requirements, and food safety preparation practices (Table 10.9). The main tasks of a food inspector can include the following ... 

Food safety regulation falls under the jurisdiction of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) in the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the Department of Health and Human Services. FSIS is responsible for ensuring the safety of meat and poultry, and it maintains an inspector at every one of the nation s 934 slaughterhouses and 175 poultry processing plants. These inspectors are responsible for the safety of the 25 billion pounds of beef and 33.5 billion pounds... 

Food safety enforcement was not a high priority for the George W. Bush Administration. FSIS inspeetors faeed constant pressure from their superiors to keep produetion lines moving. Formal instructions to inspectors stated that they were authorized to stop a line only if a product that is going into the food supply has been direetly eontaminated and you can justify the production loss. A May 2002 memorandum told Kansas City inspectors that they could be held accountable for lost produetion if they slowed the lines to check for feces or to wash their hands, beeause small smears of feces on meat were tolerable. ... 

FDA Science Board, FDA Science and Mission at Risk 21 (Report of the Subcommittee on Science and Technology, November 2007) (1972 comparison) Lyndsey Lay-ton, FDA Inspections of Food Plants, Enforcement Down, Officials Say, WP, April 7, 2010, at A6 (enforcement action decline) Seth Borenstein Brett J. Blackledge, US Relies on States for Food Safety Inspections, San Francisco Chronicle, February 10, 2009, at Aj (400 inspector loss) Andrew Bridges Seth Borenstein, FDA Food-Safety Inspections Steadily Decreasing, Seattle Times, Febmary 27, 2007, at A9. 

Michael Moss Andrew Martin, Food Safety Problems Elude Private Inspectors, NYT, March 6, 2009, at Ai Kent Garber, Food Safety s Dirty Little Secret, U.S. News World Report, September 15,2008, at 27. 

Even if OSHA had discovered the serious fire hazards at Imperial Food Products it still might not have forced compliance soon enough to prevent disaster. As shown by its treatment of the Pymm Thermometer Company, the second largest manufacturer of mercury thermometers in the United States, OSHA inspectors are often reluctant to close a company down or even impose dramatic fines when they find serious violations of health and safety standards. 

The Imperial Food Products plant opened its doors ten years prior to the fire. Over those ten years, the plant never had an inspection by the state, local, or federal inspectors. The town of Hamlet was not required to make inspections, although it was up to the municipality to enforce fire regulations. Ironically, every day the plant was in operation, there was a federal inspector on site to make sure the chicken processed was acceptable for consumption. Locking a fire door is a violation of North Carolina s fire code, a misdemeanor in this case. The state fire code requires all municipalities to have a fire inspector, even though a minimum number of inspections is not specified. Under the occupational safety regulations, a locked exit door constitutes a serious violation and because management locked fire exits knowingly, it would have been a willful violation (Diamond, 1991, p. 7A). 

The contractor was fined GBP 25000 for failing to ensure the safety of its employee. The food company was fined GBP 30 000 for failing to ensure the safety of a non-employee who was affected by the company s work. A Health and Safety Executive inspector commented that the food company could have avoided the death if it had ensured that its contractors followed, or had in place, a safe system of work, similar to that which the food company provided for its own employees. Isolation of the newly installed consumer unit would have been a valuable precaution and would in this case have prevented the incident. Isolation of any of the cables that were to remain if their sources could be traced would also have been an appropriate precaution. Live working methods throughout the whole course of the cable removal work would have been appropriate in the event that full isolation could not be achieved. 

Elisabeth Sherman is Principal Inspector of Factories with many years involvement with several London Museums. From a background in food microbiology and water chemistry she has worked in the Health and Safety Executive, on the production of the Lead Regulation and on negotiations on the EC Lead Directive, as well as inspecting all types of establishments in the London area. 

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