Issues Impacting the Development of Risk-Based Inspection at Meat and Poultry Processing Establishments. Audit Report

摘要

In 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), began the process of developing a risk-based inspection program that would assign more inspection resources at processing establishments that posed a greater food safety risk. FSIS has invested considerable time and effort into building a foundation for implementing a risk-based inspection program and has sought input from a number of external stakeholders through public meetings and expert elicitations as it developed and refined its conceptual model for risk-based inspection. FSIS recognized that development of a risk-based inspection model would be a continuous process as it learned more about the risk associated with particular products and the hazards associated with food processing operations, as well as predictive data indicators for risk. In February 2007, FSIS announced its plans to implement a pilot risk-based inspection program because the agency believed it had sound, comprehensive, and reliable data and that real and immediate improvements could be made to the effectiveness of inspection operations. Congress and other stakeholders became concerned that FSIS was beginning to implement risk-based inspection before it had corrected deficiencies reported in prior USDA Office of Inspector General (OIG) audits and that known limitations and concerns with its methodology for determining risk had not been addressed.