Potential Consequences of Public Release of Food Safety and Inspection Service Establishment-Specific Data

摘要

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is the regulatory agency in the US Department of Agriculture that is responsible for ensuring that meat, poultry, and processed egg products produced domestically or imported into the United States are safe, wholesome, and properly labeled. The agency's mission is carried out by issuing and enforcing food-safety regulations; conducting facility and product inspections, including sampling and testing; responding to foodborne-disease outbreaks; and conducting communication, education, and food-defense activities. FSIS collects a voluminous amount of data in support of its regulatory functions, but the two major types of FSIS data that are currently being considered for public release are sampling and testing data (derived from standard laboratory tests) and inspection and enforcement data (derived from text written by inspectors). Some of those data are already released to the public in aggregated form but not in disaggregated, establishment-specific form.