Government Regulations

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The government offers Americans many rules and regulations to ensure that quality meat makes if from the farm to your tables.

In 1906 President Theodore Roosevelt signed into effect, a law called the Federal Meat Inspection Act.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture website the Federal Meat Inspection Act requires that all meat products be inspected. The FMIA also requires that all federally inspected slaughterhouses must run in sanitary conditions.

Now more than 100 years later the FMIA is still in use although some changes have been made along the way. The Federal Meat Inspection Act outlines everything from inspecting animals before slaughter, the humane handling of livestock in slaughterhouses, required examination of sick animals, the packaging of the meat after processing and every other aspect involved in meat production.

The FMIA put the burden on the USDA inspectors to regulate the quality and level of sanitation of meat in the slaughterhouses.

According to a Frontline investigative report the USDA employed a “poke and sniff” method that was basically a visual and sensory oriented inspection of meat to make sure no visibly unsound meat made it through packaging.

In 1998, after an E. coli outbreak in 1993, the government redesigned the meat inspection system. The new system of meat inspection was called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point. The new system took some of the burden off the federal meat inspectors and allowed the processing companies to somewhat regulate themselves. It also put into place a more scientific approach to meat inspection than the previous visual inspection. The government still inspects the processing plants daily but the burden of compliance now lies with the managers of the plants.

States also have their own version of the FMIA and HACCP. The Texas Department of Agriculture heads up the regulation of Texas meat packing, but slaughterhouses and beef farmers who have a large enough operation still fall under federal USDA and Food and Drug Administration guidelines. Smaller farms operate under the Texas Agriculture code. Having the states regulate themselves to an extent takes unnecessary burden off the federal organizations.