Vilsack says Decision to Appeal Pork Line Speeds Ruling Isn't Up to USDA
Line Speed Debate 061721
USDA doesn't have the final say in a decision to slow line speeds at six U.S. pork plants, according to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack.
Vilsack made the comments during an interview with AgriTalk Wednesday and comes less than a month after USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service said the six facilities should prepare to revert to their old speeds of 1,106 animals per hour at the end of this month. That's when a recent court ruling is set to go into effect.
Vilsack told AgriTalk a decision on whether to the appeal court ruling is up to the Solicitor General, not USDA.
"The USDA can't be put in the position of having to choose [between] food safety, worker safety and farmer's [ability] to profit," Vislack told AgriTalk host Chip Flory. "That's not a choice that we should have to make. We should have all three. We should have farmer profit. We should make sure workers in those production facilities are safe. And we should certainly make sure that the food that we're consuming is safe. So, the key here is to try to find a way in which we could have all three not having to pick two of the three."
On March 31, the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota vacated a portion of FSIS’ final rule establishing a voluntary “New Swine Slaughter Inspection System” (NSIS). According to the update, the court found that FSIS violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it asked for comments on the impact of line speed increases on worker safety in the proposed rule but did not consider these comments in the final rule.
USDA then stated in late May that it would not seek to overturn a court ruling ordering pork packing plants to operate at slower line speeds.
According to a recent study by Iowa State University economist Dermot Hayes, reducing line speeds at pork plants could impact smaller pork producers most. Hayes’ data shows that decrease will result in somewhere between 80,000 to 100,000 head a week that will no longer be able to be harvested in a normal work week.
“In certain areas, a double-shift plant like Austin, Minn., is already harvesting 20 hours a day. They can't harvest any more hours in a given day to make up that difference,” Terry Wolters, president-elect of the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), from Pipestone, Minn., told AgriTalk last month. “Their only alternative at that point is to go to Saturdays. Are they really going to ask workers to work six days a week every week to make up that shortfall? I don't see it happening. We're already short workers in this industry.”
Listen to the complete Vilsack interview with AgriTalk's Chip Flory interview.
