Food Safety and Inspection Service United States Department of Agriculture Washington, D.C. 20250-3700

Communications to Congress

March 2001

Meat, Poultry, and Egg Products Inspection
1999 Report of the Secretary of Agriculture to the U.S. Congress

IV. Domestic and Export Inspection

Meat and Poultry Inspection

In FY 1999, FSIS inspected nearly 130 million head of livestock and almost 8.4 billion birds. About 8,200 inspectors at more than 6,400 federally inspected establishments throughout the United States monitor the slaughter and processing of all meat and poultry products prepared for interstate commerce to ensure safety, wholesomeness, and accurate labeling and packaging. In addition, FSIS employees inspect imported meat and poultry products at points of entry into the United States.

Animals are inspected before slaughter to detect diseases or other abnormalities and are inspected again after slaughter. Animal and poultry products are inspected during processing, handling, and packing. Only federally inspected meat and poultry establishments may sell their products in interstate or foreign commerce.

FSIS also oversees State inspection programs, which inspect meat and poultry products that will be sold only within the State in which they were inspected. The 1967 Wholesome Meat Act and the 1968 Wholesome Poultry Products Act require State inspection programs to be "at least equal to" the Federal inspection program. If a State chooses to end its inspection program or cannot maintain the "at least equal to" standard, FSIS must assume responsibility for inspection.

Exhibit 4-1 shows the number of federally inspected meat and poultry plants and the number of full-time permanent field personnel by location. Employment figures represent inspection field employees only. Plant figures include USDA-staffed establishments and Federal-State Cooperative Inspection plants, which are federally inspected but staffed by State employees. Exhibit 4-1 does not include foreign program employees, import establishments, officially inspected egg products plants, or in-plant inspectors in egg processing plants. [D]

Egg Products Inspection

The Egg Products Inspection Act (EPIA) requires all plants--including those involved in intrastate commerce--producing liquid, frozen, or dried eggs to operate under continuous Department of Agriculture (USDA) supervision.

By the end of FY 1999, FSIS had 103 full-time egg inspectors in 76 federally inspected egg products plants. During FY 1999, USDA inspected, and certified as wholesome, 3.4 billion pounds of liquid egg products, including 96 million pounds of non-egg ingredients such as sugar, salt, and corn syrup, added to formulate various egg products blends. USDA also reinspected 1.25 billion pounds of liquid egg products shipped from origin plants to other official plants for further processing, resulting in a total volume of 4.633 billion pounds.

Exports

The United States has trade agreements with 100 countries to accept U.S. products. FSIS facilitated U.S. meat and poultry exports to 75 of these countries during FY 1999. A total of 3.5 billion pounds of meat and 5.2 billion pounds of poultry were exported by the United States.

Table 4-2

Table 4-2 lists the number of federally inspected meat, poultry, combination meat and poultry, and other plants that operated under Federal inspection in each State or U.S. territory as of September 30, 1999.

1/ Other plants include identification warehouses, food service plants and plants slaughtering non-amenable animals, ie., elk, equine, rabbit.

2/ Federal-State Cooperative Inspection Program (FSCIP) - formerly Talmadge-Aiken.

Table 4-3

Table 4-3 presents the number of meat, poultry, and other slaughtering and/or processing plants that operated under Federal inspection as of September 30, 1999. Only federally inspected plants may sell their products in interstate or foreign commerce.

Table 4-4

Table 4-5 

Table 4-5 and exhibit 4-5 summarize the number of meat animals inspected and slaughtered in federally inspected plants in selected fiscal years from 1990 through 1999. The species listed are those legally classified as meat food animals under the Federal Meat Inspection Act. 

Exhibit 4-5

Table 4-6

Exhibit 4-6

Billions of Birds

Table 4-7

Table 4-7 summarizes the number of meat and poultry product labels reviewed and either approved or disapproved by the Food Labeling Division of Regulatory Programs and Inspectors in Charge (IIC) during FY 1999.

 Label review activity represented a 34-percent reduction over fiscal year 1998.

Table 4-8

Table 4-8 summarizes the number of animal and poultry carcasses condemned during FY 1999. Animals are condemned for disease, contamination, or adulteration during antemortem or post-mortem inspection.

Table 4-9

Table 4-9 summarizes enforcement actions taken in FY 1999 are outlined below. FSIS conducted 43,976 compliance reviews of meat and poultry handlers in FY 1999.

Table 4-10

Table 4-10 summarizes the number of samples analyzed by FSIS during FY 1999. Over 1.7 million analyses were performed on these samples.

Section IV Continues    |    Return to Contents

For Further Information Contact:
FSIS Congressional and Public Affairs Staff
Phone: (202) 720-3897
Fax: (202) 720-5704

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