The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service is responsible for ensuring that meat, poultry, and processed egg products are safe, wholesome, and properly labeled. As part of its regulatory functions, it collects voluminous amounts of data at thousands of processing facilities. A new report from the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine examines the potential food safety benefits and consequences of publishing inspection and testing data with the names of specific meat, poultry, and egg product processing plants on the Internet for public access.
Advance copies of “The potential consequences of public release of food safety and inspection service establishment-specific data” will be available to reporters only beginning at 3 p.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 29. The report is embargoed until 10 a.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 30. To obtain an embargoed copy, reporters may contact the Office of News and Public Information; tel. 202-334-2138 or e-mail news@nas.edu.
The chair of the committee that wrote the report will discuss its conclusions and take questions during a one-hour public web conference beginning at 10:30 a.m. EST Wednesday, Nov. 30. To participate, follow instructions on the study’s website: http://www8.nationalacademies.org/cp/meetingview.aspx?MeetingID=5782&MeetingNo=6.