TOPICS
TOPICS
USDA says meat inspection fees needed to avoid cutting 2,000 employees
The Bush administration has not yet asked for legislation to allow the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service to establish meat inspection user fees, though President Bush's fiscal 2006 budget counts on them to pay for essential services.
Acting Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Merle Pierson told Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Henry Bonilla, R-Texas, the administration has neither submitted legislation nor "surveyed" support for it.
Of the $849.7 million budgeted for FSIS, $139 million would come from those new fees to cover the cost of meat inspections.
Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., noted the Bush administration proposed user fees last year, although it did not request them to pay for vital services.
Pierson said the $139 million is needed "to meet our statutory responsibilities" and if FSIS does not get the money, it would be forced to cut 2,000 employees.
Rep. Allen Boyd, D-Fla., noted that administrations have unsuccessfully proposed user fees for 30 years. And Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, said: "It's been going on forever. It won't happen."
Both meat companies and consumer advocates have opposed additional user fees for inspection.
COMMENTS
- If the Food Safety and Inspection Service takes a 2,000 person cut and goes into a serious RIF mode it won't be the overbloated headquarters staff in Wing 1 of USDA's South Building that gets cut. It will be the inspector group that gets cut and each inspector will be forced to carry even more plant inspections on rotation. You too can spend years at Vet graduate school to become a Senior Vet at FSIS, work in unpleasant factory conditions, earn a whopping GS-9 salary, and be used and abused by the Service. Everytime I eat a hamburger I think that if only the American people knew how poorly treated meat inspectors are by USDA-- we'd all be vegetarians. They should be adding 2,000 inspectors- not talking of cutting an already overworked inspection service. GovExec.com reader Posted March 3, 2005 3:18 PM
- How many things appear to be wrong with this idea? The USDA food inspection system's been under fire for years --from inside and out -- now there will be a charge for that system? When a for-profit business pays for something, it not unreasonably expects the people paid for to act like employees. That didn't work out very well for the airline industry & passenger checks. If firms must pay for inspections, they should at least get some return -- like the freedom to do their own inspections for Mad Cow, the self-inspection for which is currently illegal.... Richard Tedrow Posted March 3, 2005 7:46 AM
