In one of the most far reaching changes in U.S. meat inspection history, federal regulators this fall will allow poultry plant employees – instead of USDA inspectors – to help determine whether chicken is contaminated or safe to eat, a move critics fear could spread to beef and pork processing plants.
Indeed, a severe shortage of federal inspectors in slaughterhouses is so widespread that critics and some inspectors claim some meat in supermarkets stamped as “USDA inspected” may never have been inspected at all.
Mike McGraw reports: read the full story from The Hale Center for Journalism at KCPT at http://kcpt.org.
