HACCP AND MEAT AND POULTRY INSPECTION

Agricultural Outlook Forum                      For Release: Monday,

February 23, 1998

HACCP AND MEAT AND POULTRY INSPECTION

John W. McCutcheon

Associate Deputy Administrator, Field Operations
Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA

Good morning. My name is John McCutcheon, and I am the Associate
Deputy Administrator of Field Operations, of the Food Safety and Inspection
Service (FSIS), U.S. Department of Agriculture. FSIS is the federal Agency
responsible for ensuring the safety, wholesomeness, and accurate labeling of
meat, poultry, and egg products.

It's a pleasure for me to be here today. I've been asked to tell you about the
Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point, or HACCP system, as it relates
to meat and poultry inspection.

This is an exciting time for us.

Before doing so, however, I'd like to take a few moments to describe recent
developments in the Administration's Food Safety Initiative.

FSIS operates under the authority of the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the
Poultry Products Inspection Act, and the Egg Products Inspection Act. FSIS
sets standards for food safety and inspects meat, poultry, and egg products
produced domestically and imported. Our mission is to protect the public
health and safety.

Recently, we have broadened our food safety strategy to cover the entire
farm-to-table continuum. Much of the support for our efforts has come from
the White House, under President Clinton's Food Safety Initiative. The
initiative focuses on six major areas: 1) the development of a nationwide
early-warning system for foodborne illness; 2) improvement in risk-
assessment capabilities through an interagency consortium, that will
coordinate and guide overarching Federal risk assessment research related to
food safety; 3) development of new research methods to detect the presence
of pathogens in food, enhance our understanding of how pathogens become
resistant to food-preservation techniques and antibiotics, and develop new
technologies for the prevention and control of pathogens; 4) improvement
of inspection and compliance by agencies responsible for food safety,
including greater use of HACCP; 5) development of a public-private
partnership to develop and encourage dissemination of standard food safety
messages; and 6) initiation of long-range strategic planning to address public
health, resource and management questions facing Federal food safety
agencies.

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