Food Safety Problems Slip Past Private Inspectors

[RamboLiberal]

Source: NY Times

When food industry giants like Kellogg want to ensure that American consumers are being protected from contaminated products, they rely on private inspectors like Eugene A. Hatfield. So last spring Mr. Hatfield headed to the Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia to make sure its chopped nuts, paste and peanut butter were safe to use in everything from granola bars to ice cream.

The peanut company, though, knew in advance that Mr. Hatfield was coming. He had less than a day to check the entire plant, which processed several million pounds of peanuts a month.

Mr. Hatfield, 66, an expert in fresh produce, was not aware that peanuts were readily susceptible to salmonella poisoning — which he was not required to test for anyway. And while Mr. Hatfield was inspecting the plant on behalf of Kellogg and other food companies, the Peanut Corporation was paying him for his efforts.

“The overall food safety level of this facility was considered to be: SUPERIOR,” he concluded in his March 27, 2008, report for his employer, the American Institute of Baking, which performs audits for major food companies. A copy of the audit was obtained by The New York Times.

Federal investigators later discovered that the dilapidated plant was ravaged by salmonella and had been shipping tainted peanuts and paste for at least nine months. But they were too late to prevent what has become one of the nation’s worst known outbreaks of food-borne disease in recent years, in which nine are believed to have died and an estimated 22,500 were sickened.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/06/business/06food.html?_r=1&hp

[kestrel91316]

1. Your headline is incorrect. It needs to read:

Food Safety Problems Ignored By Private "Inspectors"

[Pharlo]

7. If this individual had one day to inspect a large facility, AND

the company knew when he was coming, it would be possible for the MOST attentive, pedantic, honest, incorruptible inspector to miss something.

While I may not be a health food inspector, I've seen enough ISO audits come through companies I have worked for to know that it is very easy to hide problems.

The typical ISO audit, with which I have experience, is a scheduled 3 day audit with a two week notification period. That means we have two weeks from the time we're notified until the scheduled audit. AND, we're informed which areas will be audited. And, yes, ISO registrars are private inspectors who are paid by the company being audited.

Trust me, in a less scrupulous company, it is VERY easy to hide things if you want. And, most times, we had multiple auditors sent to the site.

So, to say that ONE person sent alone to audit a large facility is 'on the take' is not necessarily true. Not necessarily untrue either, but based upon my experience with audits, I'm inclined to give the auditor the benefit of the doubt. Personally, if I were suspecting 'bribes' in this instance it would be not with the individual auditor so much as the 'scheduler'. Anyone who schedules one person to inspect a facility this size in one day is either trying to help the company hide something, or stretched too thin and needs to increase their staffing.

I'll bet when the problems were found, there was more than one inspector on site and the inspection group had more than one day to inspect.

The refuse cited here was found in a crawl space over the production line. If there were multiple inspectors with 2 - 3 days to inspect the facility, I would have expected this issue to have been found. But one guy in one day. Sorry - like I said, look at the scheduler for the inspection company.

Just my take on it.

[santamargarita]

2. Sure they do, for a price

Doesn't matter if it's cash, hookers or cornflakes.

[pattmarty]

3. Well, we know what the fucking problem is: "Private inspectors"

[ConcernedCanuk]

4. I hope Mr. Hatfield is retired now?

.
.
.

with a big bonus of course . . .

Isn't that how the USA rewards corporate slime-balls?

He should go to jail and be fed peanut butter sammiches for the rest of his life

well - give him some whole peanuts for good behavior now and then . .

[rainbow4321]

5. Texas inspector failed to flag missing license at salmonella-linked plant

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/030609dntexsalmanella.2e87623.html


A Texas agriculture inspector failed to note that a peanut plant at the center of a national salmonella outbreak was operating without a state health department license despite at least three visits in the years before hundreds of people got sick, according to interviews and documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The inspector responsible for certifying the plant to process organic products noted after each visit that the plant had such a license when it didn't. Health officials said problems at the plant operated by Peanut Corp. of America might have been flagged years ago had the inspector, who has since been fired, reported the plant's failure to obtain the required license.

When the plant was finally inspected earlier this year, Texas health officials found dead rodents, rodent excrement and bird feathers in a crawl space above a production area, leading them to order a recall of all products the plant had shipped since 2005.

Tests have since shown that ground peanuts at the Plainview plant were contaminated with the same strain of salmonella that sickened more than 650 people, is suspected of causing at least nine deaths, and led to one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history. Salmonella has also been detected in peanut samples from a Georgia plant operated by Peanut Corp., which has filed for bankruptcy amid fallout from the outbreak.

[struggle4progress]

6. Hey, we could privatize all enforcement! Let me hire a guy to check once in a while

whether I'm driving the speed limit. Let me hire a guy to check once in a while whether I'm raping or murdering people, or holding up liquor stores, or setting other people's cars on fire. He can call and come by (say) quarterly, explain the law to me, follow me around for most of a day, then send me his report and bill, and I'll pay him :)

[guitar man]

8. let me fix that headline

"Cash slips into the pocket of private inspectors"

there, all fixed.

:grr: