What Does A USDA Inspector Do?
When we give tours of our meat processing, one thing that seems to surprise many visitors is the role our USDA Inspector plays at our facility. So let’s chat about what our USDA Inspector does for us and for our customers.
Eagle-Eye Overview
Our USDA Inspector is essentially a third-party auditor, paid and employed by the federal government via American taxpayers. The main purpose: Make sure the American people are getting products that meet health and safety standards.
He/she works 40 hours a week alongside us, providing checks and balances -and a plethora of paperwork- to make sure our facility is clean, our processes are sound, and the animals coming through our facility and feeding the American public are healthy and good for consumption.
“That’s actually the USDA's mission .... to ensure that a properly labeled, wholesome product, is produced in a sanitary environment,” says Jim McCafferty, a former USDA Inspector, now a consultant helping startup plants like ours.
As described by the USDA website: “Consumer Safety Inspectors work in one or more privately owned meat, poultry and egg processing plants. They ensure that the establishment's Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOP) and Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) Plans meet regulatory requirements. In addition, they conduct regulatory oversight activities inside the plants in matters relating to other areas of consumer protection, e.g., misbranding. Consumer Safety Inspectors play a vital role in protecting the public's health.”
Nitty Gritty
A day at work might look something like this:
Inspect the facility before use. The kill floor and cut room must be cleaned and sanitized before work begins and as needed throughout the day.
Antemortem Inspection (inspect the health of animals before slaughter). They must appear healthy and be able to walk onto the kill floor to continue.
Post-mortem Inspection (inspect the health of each animal after slaughter). Organs, lymph nodes, head, etc. must appear normal and healthy to continue.
Inspect carcass. After skinning and splitting the animal, the carcass is inspected again for any hairs or other extraneous material on the carcass. If any is found, it needs to be trimmed off and re-inspected. Carcass must be spotless and sterilized to continue.
Test for harmful microbes. The USDA performs microbiological sampling on all the products we produce.
Monitor paperwork and logs. We are required to keep logs of practically everything you can imagine- from carcass numbers to inventory tracking and temperature logs-which keep several employees busy all day long. These logs are reported to and monitored by our USDA Inspector.
So if you are choosing to process your beef, pork, or lamb with us for your business, rest assured that many people took extra steps to provide you with healthy animals from a clean facility that meets federal standards daily so that you can sell and enjoy your products nationwide.