Republican lawmakers and the chicken industry “are aggressively lobbying to speed up” inspection lines, now limited to 140 birds per minute, at poultry slaughter and processing plants, says NBC News. The trade group National Chicken Council has petitioned USDA to allow plants participating in a new inspection system to operate “at any line speed” they can handle.
Worker-safety advocates fear that faster line speeds will mean an increase in injuries to plant employees, who use knives and other sharp tools. NBC News says poultry workers are twice as likely to suffer serious injuries as other industrial workers. The Chicken Council says that plants could cut costs and increase production if they are given a waiver from the current limit on line speeds.
When USDA began the pilot program on the new inspection system, participating plants could run the lines as high as 175 birds per minute. The Labor Department argued successfully to hold the line speed to 140 birds per minute when USDA made the new system available to the industry. The new approach gives the processing companies more responsibility to identify diseased birds and remove them from the processing line while USDA inspectors put more attention on spotting bacterial contamination that could cause illness.