June 1, 2009

 

USDA targets stoppage of imports of unapproved meat products

Stopping imported food products that contain only a small percentage of unapproved meat ingredients has traditionally been a minor concern for US food-safety officials, but new human health concerns over intentional food tampering has heightened the threat, according to the US Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service, or FSIS.

 

Imported food containing unapproved meat products has been entering the US, landing in grocery stores across the country.

 

The FSIS, in new guidelines it published in April for importers, said the agency recently discovered that "products containing small amounts of cooked meat or poultry ingredients have entered the [US] without an assurance that the products are from an approved source."

 

Until now, the USDA's animal-disease agency - the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, or Aphis - has taken the primary role when it comes to such food. If Aphis deemed there to be no threat of animal-disease contamination, a USDA spokesman said, it often permitted the import and informed USDA's food-safety agency afterwards.

 

The USDA's FSIS "has always played a secondary role" to Aphis as well as the US Department of Homeland Security's Customs and Border Protection, the FSIS said in the new guidelines. However, it added: "Recent developments have pointed to a problem with this approach."

 

Those recent developments include "the intentional contamination of powdered milk with melamine distributed worldwide," according to the FSIS guidelines.

 

USDA spokesman Brian Mabry said new policy will require that both Aphis and FSIS sign off on an import permit for food that contains small amounts or meat products in the ingredients.

 

"Beginning on June 22, 2009, importers of food products that contain small amounts of meat or poultry will not be granted an import permit by [Aphis] unless a determination is first made by FSIS that the meat, poultry or egg product ingredient was prepared under specific conditions that will insure these ingredients are not adulterated," FSIS said in the guidelines.

 

The new policy won't be in place until June 22, but the FSIS has already stepped up its efforts over the past couple of months to get the unapproved food imports off US supermarket shelves.

 

In March and April, the USDA announced recalls to try to get back more than 100,000 pounds of products containing beef or chicken ingredients that had been imported from "unapproved" sources and sold in US retail stores.

 

On April 29, the USDA announced a recall to try to get back 16,213 pounds of Chinese seasoning sold in the US that contained beef fat. The 14-ounce packages of "Lion Pavillion Hot Pot Seasoning Containing Bovine Cattle Fat" had been sold nationwide, the USDA said.

 

USDA's Mabry said the new policy is designed to prevent the need for such recalls of unapproved products and "make sure that we catch them before they actually enter [the US]."