Citing President Donald Trump’s calls for deregulation, Republican lawmakers and the chicken industry are aggressively lobbying to speed up poultry inspection lines – a change the Obama administration had rejected after warnings it would endanger workers and increase food contamination.
The National Chicken Council has asked the USDA to allow poultry plants participating in a new inspection system to operate “at any line speed” they can safely handle, freeing them from the 140 birds-per-minute limit that the Obama administration had established for most plants.
The Obama-era cap is an “arbitrary” limit that is holding back the industry’s ability to compete in the global marketplace, the National Chicken Council stated in its petition. Read more