Traditional versus hazard analysis and critical control point-based inspection: Results from a poultry slaughter project

Federal meat and poultry inspection has changed little since the Federal Me at Inspection Act was passed in 1906, followed by the Poultry Products Insp ection Act of 1957 and related amendments. These acts mandate sensory or or ganoleptic (sight, smell, and touch) inspection of all carcasses. For sever al decades, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has been urged by various organizations to move to a scient ific, risk-based inspection system. In partial response to these calls, the FSIS has developed new slaughter inspection models that are currently bein g tested with volunteer plants in the hazard analysis and critical control point (HACCP)-based inspection models project. To evaluate whether plants o perating under the new inspection models perform at least as well as they d id under the current or traditional system, microbial and oganoleptic data are being collected before and after the implementation of the new inspecti on models. In this article, we describe the baseline and models data collec tion procedures and present the results of the baseline and models data col lection for eight plants that slaughter young chickens. The results from th e first eight volunteer plants suggest that inspection under the new models is equivalent and in some ways superior to that of traditional inspection. This pilot project suggests that new slaughter inspection systems, which r ely on HACCP principles with FSIS oversight and verification services, can maintain or even improve food safety and other consumer protection conditio ns relative to traditional hands-on inspection methods.