Another reason to grow your own chickens and seek ordinace changes to allow it!

[Kikiriki]

http://news.yahoo.com/usda-let-industry-self-inspect-chicken-191142649--abc-news-topstories.html

The article discusses how the poultry industry will be allowed to perform their own inspections: talk about allowing the fox to guard the henhouse... Self regulation always works (sarcasm).

 

[Ridgerunner]

It is not unusual in the heavy construction industry where I worked for the construction company to provide their own inspection, such as welding inspectors or dimension controllers. It worked pretty well most of the time. Those company provided inspectors were certified so they had to know what they were doing. They had to submit their resume and we had final approval on them. The inspection industry was small enough and we had worked with them enough that we pretty much knew them anyway. We knew who would do a good job and who we had to watch like a hawk.

Some construction campanies are more honest than others, just like some processing plants are more honest than others. Most of the problems in processing come from plants with a history of problems. There area lot of processing plants that don't have a history of problems. At least we could refuse to use certain contractors that we knew were dishonest. I'm not sure the USDA has that luxury.

But to me the key was that we also had our own certified inspectors working with their inspectors. Not just watching them but inspecting their work. If the construction company inspectors were not doing their job properly, the production was shut down and a lot of retesting was done. If out inspectors were doing their job, the construction campany inspectors usually did very well or the construction company would run them off and replace them. Mistakes or poor performance was very costly to the construction company.

But I remember one specific construction fabrication yard in Cherbourg, France. We were having a project build side by side with another company, very similar projects. We were in the yard watching the job all the time, two engineers and three inspectors.. The other company's two inspectors with no engineers spent all day in their office playing cards. The difference in quality of the work on the two projects was tremendous. I very much believe you get what you inspect.

The USDA proposal might work. It very much depends on how it is set up and what the penalties are. It also depends a lot on the quality of the USDA inspectors doing the overseeing. But even with the USDA doing all the inspecting, how effective it was depends on the quality of the inspectors.

We want more efficient government and the government to reduce expenditures. This sounds like a way to do that, but there is risk involved. It does require working smarter, not harder. But maybe by hiring more inspectors than the USDA provided, they can process more birds per hour and reduce overall processing expenses. That would be a win for everybody. But like I said, how well it actually works depends on how it is set up. I'm not brimming with confidence they'll get it right.