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

Office of Policy, Program Development and Evaluation

Meat and Poultry Advisory Committee Staff

Attachments to
Workforce of the Future Briefing Paper

The current FSIS workforce is primarily technician-based. From 1906 to 1999, the Food Inspector served as the primary regulatory presence in meat and poultry plants. The workforce also includes a cadre of professional specialists today in headquarters, labs, and field locations. These specialists, who also play a vital role in carrying out our regulatory mission, include veterinarians, food technologists, epidemiologists, physicians, microbiologists, chemists, and others. They carry out work that requires an in-depth knowledge of specific scientific disciplines for which they were educated. For example, a complement of about 1,000 Veterinary Medical Officers remains integral to FSIS’s statutory function of preventing diseased animals from entering the food supply. In addition, professional specialists’ work supports technical inspection; for example, specialists draft the performance standards, develop the computerized systems, and complete the analyses that support technical inspection. Completing the current workforce are compliance officers, who specialize in enforcement, investigation, emergency response and case documentation; and administrative support personnel.

The Food Inspector continued to be the main frontline regulatory presence through many improvements in the inspection program over the years that reflect increased public health understanding, changes in the regulated industry and changes in consumer expectations.

The Future: A Workforce that Supports the New Food Safety System

The Agency believes that the workforce of the future will include technical, professional and administrative employees, as it does today. However, FSIS believes the workforce inevitably must include a higher proportion of professional employees than it does today, if the Agency it is to continue to be effective in food safety and consumer protection. The Agency envisions assigning Consumer Safety Officers across the frontline workforce, but also throughout the organization. There will be no increase in the Agency workforce as a result of the introduction of the CSO occupation. CSO positions will be filled by selecting current inspectors with the requisite qualifications and through external recruitment as attrition permits. As the Inspector is the principal employee of today, the Consumer Safety Officer will be the principal employee of tomorrow.

.Implementation of the PR/HACCP rule and other regulatory reforms have improved and will continue to strengthen the food safety system. Our workforce must also evolve, commensurate with this even stronger food safety system. The process of implementing the PR/ HACCP rule has confirmed that the frontline workforce needs a broader scientific and analytical background, not only to meet the challenges of tomorrow, but also to meet the demands of today. We can no longer defer the reshaping of our workforce to "the future." The future is now.

Today’s Needs and Tomorrow’s Challenges

Today’s Needs

Today, as we enter a new century, the Agency is realizing its goal of overseeing the implementation of pathogen reduction and HACCP regulations. However, much more remains to be done.

• Verifying HACCP Systems Adequacy. Having assured that more than 6,000 federally inspected meat and poultry plants have HACCP plans in place, FSIS must now take on the more challenging and critical task of evaluating the scientific adequacy of the HACCP plans and the plants’ execution of the plans in producing safe food, in a manner that maintains the distinction in responsibilities and flexibility for industry.

Our purpose is not to approve individual HACCP plans, but to verify how well HACCP systems are working to produce safe food. Enforcement actions, voluntary product recalls and outbreaks are indicators that not all HACCP systems are working equally well.

Verification will be conducted by intensive reviews utilizing onsite professionals with appropriate scientific background and analytical skills, and that is one reason we want to increase our proportion of employees with scientific and analytical skills who are on-site -- specifically Consumer Safety Officers. The employees who conduct verification should be able to apply onsite a professional capability to weigh all available information, including real time information, and prioritize and plan inspection activities so as to focus attention where it is most needed in the plants. The employee should be able to evaluate plant hazard analyses and other decision-making documents used to develop the plant’s plans including its HACCP plans, Sanitation Standard Operating Procedures (SSOPs), and microbiological sampling plans to determine if the analyses and plans are scientifically sound and consistent. The employee should be able to assess the overall effectiveness of the plant’s execution of its process control system for all aspects of the manufacturing process.

• Outbreak Prevention and Containment. Enhancements in food safety, including FoodNet and PulseNet, have enabled federal and state food safety agencies to identify and act on foodborne illness more effectively. Because we have more tools to detect problems, we are finding problems earlier. That is the good news. However, we do not have the right mix of professional and technical employees on board to address situations occurring today. For example, within the past two years, FSIS has struggled to manage its resources to respond scientifically and technically to a foodborne disease outbreak affecting persons in several states, ultimately traced to bacteria in processed meat products. The Agency also worked with other agencies to investigate a threat of terrorist food contamination. As a result, the federal and state food safety agencies agree that better coordination on outbreaks and recalls is a high priority. We believe that we need a greater proportion of employees with scientific and analytical skills, particularly on the front lines, to deal with these problem situations, and that Consumer Safety Officers is the appropriate series.

• A diverse food supply has more complex problems. One side effect of a more complex food system and a greater diversity of products and processes is that there can be more opportunities for problems to occur. That is why a HACCP system is necessary to anticipate, prevent and control food safety problems. Even so, unique problems can and do come up which require a comprehensive, interdisciplinary approach to resolve.

We believe that having available in frontline operations a greater number of professional employees with a general scientific background and analytical skills would speed up our response to and better address these unique problems, and enhance understanding to prevent those problems in the future. The Consumer Safety Officer is the employee with those qualifications.

• Industry Innovation. HACCP regulations and performance standards are less prescriptive than former command and control regulations, thereby encouraging industry innovation and use of new technology to improve food safety. Regulatory evaluation of innovative approaches to controlling pathogens for effectiveness in meeting performance standards demands application of sound judgment and scientific knowledge, in a timely manner. We need a greater proportion of employees with these skills in order to keep pace with industry innovation and enable prompter commercial implementation of improvements developed by industry. This is one more important reason for Consumer Safety Officers now.

• Improved Compliance through Effective Communication with Industry. The FSIS frontline regulator needs to be able to more clearly articulate to industry officials the scientific and regulatory basis for inspection decisions to obtain compliance. Some of our frontline inspectors do not have the mix of knowledge and skills to communicate effectively with their counterparts in the industry. The outcome of ineffective communication is wasted time and resources for both regulator and regulated. It is important to increase the proportion of professional employees in our workforce with a sound knowledge of scientific principles, analytical ability, and strong interpersonal skills in carrying out their regulatory responsibilities. We believe implementing the Consumer Safety Officer series will improve regulatory effectiveness by improving communication with the regulated industry.

• Risk Analysis. The Agency's continuing goal is to focus its effort on addressing the true human health risks associated with meat, poultry and egg products, as has been recommended by the National Academy of Sciences. We believe that this is best accomplished by using a farm-to-table approach to microbial risk assessment to identify significant food safety hazards and identify potential strategies to prevent, reduce or eliminate those hazards, including emerging zoonotic diseases such as BSE.

The application of risk assessment techniques to microbial pathogens poses some special challenges that differ from chemical, environmental or toxicological risk assessments. This is increasing the Agency's need for personnel with training in the sciences, the analytical skills and the ability to (a) assess the situations encountered in plants, in transportation, and in distribution and warehousing that present a risk to food safety; and (b) to design real-time strategies to address these situations.

Tomorrow’s Challenges

• Regulatory reform. As regulatory reform continues, it will further modify the role of the FSIS employee to underscore our regulatory focus on systems as a whole -- not just segments of the system such as sanitation or product adulteration. To be effective in a systems approach to food safety, inspection employees need to rely less on explicit, precise command-and-control regulations and more on professional knowledge, analytical skills and judgment within the context of HACCP regulations and performance standards.

• HACCP Systems Approach Tested in Slaughter. The Agency has begun the pilot-testing phase of a project to more fully integrate the principles of a science-based, preventive food safety system into slaughter operations, and to determine whether this new system is at least as effective as--or better than--current systems for young, healthy animals.

If the HACCP-based approach to the slaughtering process is implemented, technical inspection personnel would still be responsible for oversight inspection, as they are today. However, the Agency anticipates that one professional employee (a Consumer Safety Officer) could be responsible for verification of process control systems on both the slaughter and processing side of a combination plant. Currently, there are about 800 combination slaughter/processing plants. This change would enable some technical inspection personnel freed up from verification inspection to be utilized to perform additional food safety tasks.

Achieving the Workforce of the Future

The transition to the workforce of the future will be accomplished over time. The pace of implementation, and the point at which a critical mass of CSOs is in place, will depend on a number of factors, including attrition of current employees. Throughout the planning and implementation phases, the Agency has committed to good communications with the bargaining unit to keep the union well informed and to meet the statutory obligations.

This is an excerpt from the Report to Congress on the Consumer Safety Officer initiative (February 15, 2000). The complete report is accessible on the FSIS website: http://www.fsis.usda.gov (check under Communications to Congress).

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Attachment 2

Workforce of the Future Steering Committee Charter

Objective: Coordinate and integrate Agency efforts to design and implement roles and responsibilities for the FSIS workforce and to guide the transition to the workforce of the future.

Team Roles and Responsibilities:

• Establish guiding principles for the transitioning of the workforce in support of the food safety and consumer protection system of the future.

• Review progress and recommendations of various workforce planning initiatives and work groups to ensure consistency with the guiding principles.

• Advise work group leaders of potential problems and facilitate interaction and discussion with/among groups to prevent or resolve concerns in a collaborative manner.

• Advise groups on developing documentation and tracking systems, as necessary, to monitor progress and outcome and to provide that information to the WOFSC.

• Identify inconsistencies or conflicts and make recommendations to ensure that the outcomes of workforce planning initiatives support the guiding principles, Agency goals and objectives, the strategic plan, budgetary limits, civil rights requirements, diversity objectives, and LMR obligations and other employee organization commitments.

• Ensure clear, consistent and timely internal and external communication about progress, outcome.

• Ensure the roles and responsibilities of new or modified positions are clearly defined and are not overlapping or duplicative with each other and with existing positions.

• Identify areas where employees in new or modified positions, whether selected from within or hired externally, need adequate and consistent Agency support to become fully integrated into the workforce.

• Identify missing and overlapping areas to work group leaders and make recommendations to the Administrator on areas of concern.

• Prepare and submit consolidated progress reports to the Agency’s executive leadership on the various workforce initiatives.

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Attachment 4

FSIS Guiding Principles for Transition to the Workforce of the Future

FSIS, in concert with other federal, state and local agencies, is moving toward a farm-to-table national food safety and consumer protection system. The Agency must redeploy its resources, including workforce, to support the new national system. The probable duration for this transition is October 1, 1999, through September 30, 2005. FSIS developed guiding principles to help minimize employee disruption and facilitate consistency as FSIS reorganized for HACCP implementation. Now, as FSIS begins this transition to the workforce of the future, guiding principles are just as important. Change is inevitable; but continuity is also critical. These guiding principles, which might be thought of as ground rules for the transition, provide a framework against which Agency actions and decisions will be considered to ensure a consistent FSIS approach.

*Theme: Many FSIS employees will be offered a job in the workforce of the future.

1. The Agency goal is to have a position to offer every permanent FSIS employee wishing to remain with the Agency. The position offered will likely involve different duties and responsibilities and may require the employee to relocate.

2. Permanent employees, who would be required to relocate or gain additional qualifications, and who do not wish to do so, would be provided Career Transition and/or outplacement assistance, as applicable.

*Theme: FSIS will help prepare current employees to serve in the workforce of the future.

3. The Agency will provide assistance to employees who demonstrate responsibility for their own personal development. Financial assistance will be provided to the extent that budgetary conditions permit.

4. The Agency will provide all employees with information that will help them evaluate their current qualifications against qualifications for specific occupational categories in the workforce of the future.

5. The Agency will provide all employees with information on education and training resources pertinent to gaining the qualifications needed to serve in specific occupational categories in the workforce of the future. The Agency will provide a reasonable timeframe for employees to meet the proper educational/training qualifications.

*Theme: Fairness and Consistency

6. The Agency will develop and implement policies and processes that provide consistency and fairness in the allocation of resources for training and educating current employees to serve in the workforce of the future.

7. The Agency will develop and implement policies and processes for staffing the organizational structure to provide consistency and fairness in treatment of employees.

8. Sensitivity and attention to civil rights impact /requirements and equal employment opportunity principles will be an integral part of dealing with all transition issues.

9. The Agency will continue to deal in good faith with the union and employee organizations by operating in accordance with LMR statutes and/or agreements.

*Theme: FSIS will minimize disruption to employees during the transition of its workforce. Two-way communication is a critical mechanism for minimizing disruption and enabling employees to make their own choices.

10. FSIS acknowledges that change is difficult for employees. The transition will be managed in a way that minimizes disruption to FSIS programs and the lives of FSIS employees.

11. The Agency recognizes that employees who are well informed, and given the opportunity to comment on workforce issues are in the best position to make sound decisions about their personal futures. Therefore, there will be open, continuous and timely communication with all employees on transition issues and progress on implementation. The Agency will also continue its open public dialogue on workforce of the future issues.

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Last modified:  September 05, 2000