For the mainbar (INSPECTIONS) website display

Instructions for visuals/PDF documents/links
For the mainbar (INSPECTIONS) website display:
We’d like a six-photo tile that shows various types of meat under federal
regulation. We’d like hot dogs/hamburgers, sausages, steaks, chicken
breast and pepperoni pizza. On dreamstime, I have made a collection of 14
images to choose from. Some categories have more than one photo option.
I think you probably need my login to see my “lightbox.” My login is terlos20
and my password is Teresa. The lightbox name is “Inspection tile.”
If you want this to
be evergreen, go
with years -changing this to "in
2010."
For the mainbar’s side scroll:
Below is a copy of the text (it’s made it through several rounds of
editing, so I would assume this is somewhat what the finished
product will look like – but no guarantees!). I have marked with
highlights where we would like the images on the side to trigger.
Almost 9 million pounds of meat and poultry were recalled last year because of the
potential for foodborne illness after they had already been approved under
America’s strictest food regulations.
"was" and "it" sted "were" and "they." Because the
measure of pounds is the subject rather than just
pounds, it takes a singular verb and pronoun.
For clarity,I'd insert
"that": "products
that 21 ..."
Your call and no harm since it's a
quote, but also no harm in
conforming to AP style sans serial
comma.
Webster's New
World has as
"potpie."
While most of what Americans eat is the responsibility of the U.S. Food and Drug
Pronoun
Administration, the Food Safety and Inspection Service within the U.S.
relates back
Department of Agriculture oversees meat and poultry.
to singular
IMAGE “Inspections_1” √ (wide)
Every USDA-inspected food on the market – including steaks, chicken pot pies unit of
weight. It
and frozen pepperoni pizzas – carries a seal the government says ensures the food should be
is “safe, wholesome, and correctly labeled.”
"it" -- or
IMAGE “Inspections_2” √ (close) The stamp was on the 8.9 million pounds of
meat and poultry products 21 companies recalled last year because of fears they
contained deadly pathogens. Five of the recalls were linked to 312 illnesses
reported nationwide.
replace with
"the food
items" or
"the
products."
Since 1996, all meat and poultry slaughter and processing plants have been
required to develop Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points plans. These plans
outline how each product could be tainted and what the company will do to avoid
or rectify contamination. Federal inspectors see that companies follow the plans.
LINK TO HISTORY SIDEBAR
Flaws in this complex system of industry self-regulation and government oversight
were to blame in several outbreaks and recalls over the past five years. Consumers
get sick when companies don’t account for major health risks in their food safety
plans, workers don’t follow those plans or federal reviews overlook problems.
After four children in Washington and California died in 1992 and 1993 from
eating E. coli O157-tainted hamburgers from Jack in the Box, the government
required safety plans that account for pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella.
The plans were in addition to carcass-by-carcass physical inspection in
slaughterhouses, the main government safeguard for meat and poultry at the time.
Commas instead. If you
disagree,
Gilger
The deaths exposed the weakness of carcass inspection: Pathogens
can’t be
seen,style sheet
calls for short dashes.
smelled or touched.
GRAPHIC named “inspection_1” √ Carcass inspectors—who do not review safety
plans—still do the physical checks all day, every day in slaughterhouses. Their
goal is to spot signs of disease and feces on the meat, but some inspectors and
consumer advocates say rapid production speeds make it almost impossible to find
contamination. LINK TO INSPECTORS SIDEBAR
comma here.
Other inspectors, whose job is to verify that companies abide by their own safety
plans, visit slaughterhouses and processing plants including those that produce deli
If point is that inspection rather than
meats, chicken tenders and ground beef every day.
production occurs every day, need to
IMAGE named “Inspections_3” √
strike comma
put "every day" back after "plants."
Inspectors check cooking and cooling temperatures, take pathogen tests, monitor
procedures
sanitation and review records companies use to prove they follow procedure.
Inspectors document violations, but can’t force a company to change its plan.
Before you paste...
“(This system) puts the responsibility of food safety in the hands of people trying
to make a profit,” said Timothy Pachirat, an assistant professor of politics at The
New School cq in New York.
IMAGE “Inspections_4” √ Pachirat spent five months in 2004 working
undercover at a slaughterhouse in Omaha, Neb., for his book, “Every Twelve
Seconds: Industrialized Slaughter and the Politics of Sight,” which will be released
in October.
For longer shelf life: "was to be released in October 2011.
Back-to-back recalls in 2008 show how inconsistent federal oversight and a
company’s resistance to revise a faulty plan can lead to massive recalls and sicken
consumers.
In July 2008, Nebraska Beef recalled 5.3 million pounds of meat linked to 49 E.
coli O157 illnesses in seven states. In August, the company recalled 1.4 million
more pounds associated with a different outbreak of E. coli O157 that sickened 27
people in 10 states and Canada. IMAGE Inspections_5 - Getty images,
#dv1357046 OR #EC0461-002 - not purchased yet
Before the recalls, Food Safety and Inspection Service reports tracked years of
violations at Nebraska Beef. In 2002, the government temporarily shut the Omaha
plant for not following its own sanitation procedures, which are required under the
same regulation that requires hazard analysis plans.
DOCUMENT Link to Nebraska Beef records/first set - “Inspections_1” in
DOCUMENTS √
I'd say "arguing
that numerous ..."
In 2003, Nebraska Beef sued the USDA and individual inspectors, arguing
numerous food safety citations were a conspiracy against the company.
GRAPHIC named “inspections_2” √ The plant passed three federal food safety
reviews in 2004 and 2005.
After Nebraska Beef failed three E. coli O157 tests in 2006, the company was
under heightened government scrutiny for eight months as the plant repeatedly
violated its own sanitation procedures.
short dash
Despite the confirmed presence of E. coli O157, the company’s safety plan didn’t
acknowledge the pathogen was a health risk in beef trim—one of the most
common places to find E. coli O157.
In the eight months leading up to the 2008 recalls, Nebraska Beef passed two more
federal reviews -- one just a month before the first outbreak.
GRAPHIC named “inspections_3” √ The summer 2008 illnesses prompted a
scathing evaluation from the Food Safety and Inspection Service, which told
Nebraska Beef that its pathogen tests did “not give you or us any assurance that
Strike comma.
your system is working as designed.”
The report said the plant’s testing failed to find any E. coli O157 in June, while an
outside lab identified it 19 times that month.
DOCUMENT Link to Neb. Beef records - “Inspections_2” in Documents √
In response to the FSIS evaluation, Nebraska Beef said it would reduce production
line speeds, use different cleaning sanitizers and have a third-party lab test more of
its beef for pathogens.
What is your style?
I've seen only
News21.
Strike comma.
In a copy of the FSIS report, made available to NEWS21 by consumer safety
advocate Tony Corbo of Food and Water Watch, the pages outlining changes in
If Corbo didn't redact the document, make clear
Nebraska Beef’s safety plan were redacted.
who did.
Nebraska Beef did not return calls seeking comment. The Food Safety and
Inspection Service declined several requests to be interviewed for this story.
New World: potpie
ConAgra Foods’ massive pot pie recall in 2007 also highlights the potential for
critical error.
"error" seems bureaucratic: suggest errors
Recalled beef, chicken and turkey pot pies from a ConAgra plant in Marshall, Mo.,
caused more than 400 illnesses reported to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention from 41 states.
Contaminated meat and poultry kill more than 600 people and sicken 2.9 million
others in the U.S. annually, according to a 2011 University of Florida Emerging
Pathogens Institute analysis.
If this is quoting her thoughts,
Link to UF report - http://www.epi.ufl.edu/ √
punctuate as "thinking, 'You have no
control,'" said ..." If not, strike comma.
IMAGE “Inspections_6” √ Amy Eberle’s then 23-month-old son ate a salmonellacontaminated pot pie, causing bloody diarrhea that filled more than 90 diapers a
day. Her son, now 5, lost 40 percent of his body weight in three weeks.
I'd swap to
"something
required by
company
procedures
." It's
ambiguous
what
"which"
relates to.
“By the third week, I just remember standing there thinking, you have no control,”
said Eberle, an assistant quality assurance manager in Minden, Neb. “You don’t
Does she inspect food? This reference makes me
know what’s going on.”
wonder. If not, I'd strike it.
After the outbreak, the Food Safety and Inspection Service found ConAgra
workers weren’t thoroughly inspecting equipment for cleanliness, which company
If you keep this, "procedures."
procedure required.
ConAgra’s safety plan left the responsibility for eliminating pathogens to
consumers cooking at home, according to a letter FSIS sent the company detailing
violations that the agency wanted corrected.
The letter also explained that the instructions on the boxes didn’t get the pot pies
hot enough to kill salmonella. A copy of the FSIS letter was given to NEWS21 by
Seattle lawyer Bill Marler, who represented Eberle in a 2007 lawsuit against
ConAgra. They settled for an undisclosed sum.
"They" is always ambiguous. If you want to convey that both
parties agreed to a settlement, say "The parties settled ..." If
you want to convey that ConAgra settled, say, "The company
settled ..."
I see News21
elsewhere. Check
it.
The word "cases"
throws me because
I think illnesses. If
you're talking about
DOCUMENTS Link to ConAgra records “Inspections_3” in Documents √ recalls, say that.
Also "last year"
Post-recall, ConAgra said it would more rigorously test final products and would have more
ingredients from other facilities for contamination. It also changed cooking shelf life as "the
2010."
I'd strike "the."
For shelf life: in
2010.
instructions on the boxes.
Even the best food safety plan is futile if a company can’t prove it’s being
followed. Unreliable paperwork prompted two recalls totaling almost 5 million
pounds of food last year at California companies Huntington Meat Packing and
Autentico cq Foods.
It's Hazard
and a longer
name
In February 2010, a criminal investigation at Huntington determined plant records elsewhere.
central to the company’s food safety plan could not “be relied upon to document CQed full
compliance with the requirements,” according to a recall notice. Food Safety and name on
FDA site.
Inspection Service reports on last year’s cases were unavailable.
“It may be true that there are plants in which the letter of (the Hazards and Critical
Control Points system) is followed,” said Pachirat, the New School professor, “but
the point is there’s a fundamental problem with a food safety system that depends
for its regulatory effectiveness on self-reporting.”
According to Pachirat’s book, workers in his plant falsified paperwork claiming
meat was free of contamination and lied to inspectors about remedying food safety
violations.
Make it: "campylobacter" and "listeria."
In the 15 years since the introduction of the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control
Points system, illness from the six main foodborne pathogens, including E. coli
O157, Campylobacter and Listeria, has decreased 23 percent, according to the
CDC.
“The significant reduction in foodborne illness associated with meat and poultry
products is the proof” the system is working, said Thomas Billy, a former Food
Safety and Inspection Service administrator who was a government and industry
consultant after he retired in 2003. “The numbers don’t lie.”
IMAGE “Inspections_7” OR “Inspections_7-2” √Yet the number of salmonella
cases has increased, and poultry is the leading cause of foodborne salmonella
infections, according to the University of Florida analysis. And a News21 report
found many public health experts question the extent of E. coli O157’s decline
because of changes in clinical testing procedures.
found "that"
He's been gone to wrong to refer to in second reference.
Reintroduce him: "... said Marler, the Seattle attorney ... " or
something like that.
LINK TO DUSTIN’S TESTING STORY
“I certainly don’t buy that we should throw up our hands and say a few deaths here
and some kidney failure there is part of having the cheapest meat in the world,”
Marler said. “The failure of the food safety system is the failure to put public
health first.”
AP style: President Barack Obama
The food safety overhaul President Obama signed in January applies only to the
Food and Drug Administration and does not affect meat and poultry regulation.
For the History sidebar:
IMAGE Begin with this Gemini photo from Getty - not purchased yet Inspections_sidebar_history_1
http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/50675145/Time-Life-Pictures (should go in
History sidebar folder in images)
What began as a way to keep food safe for astronauts in space has become the
backbone of modern regulations for meat and poultry safety.
In 1963, NASA decided space was perhaps the worst place to contract food
poisoning. So with the Gemini and Apollo missions, the agency required
companies that made food for astronauts to reduce pathogens, eventually by
outlining “critical control points” of how food could be contaminated and how
threats would be eliminated.
Dash, not hyphen
comma after 1993
NASA made companies keep extensive records of their processes, down to the
origin of raw materials and names of workers involved in production.
Fast forward to 1993 when E. coli O157 - a virulent strain - killed four children in
two states who had eaten Jack in the Box hamburgers. Some food companies by
then had adopted safety systems similar to what NASA required, but they weren’t
mandatory.
IMAGE “Inspection_sidebar_history_2” At that time, the Food Safety and
Inspection Service, which oversees meat and poultry under the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, ensured food safety by inspecting every animal carcass with sight,
smell and touch. IMAGE “Inspection_sidebar_history_3” That approach - in place
since 1906 after Upton Sinclair’s “The Jungle” exposed dirty meatpacking plants was ineffective for finding invisible pathogens. √
With support from scientific organizations, including the National Academy of
Sciences, the industry and consumer advocates, FSIS mandated in 1996 that meat
and poultry companies implement plans, much like those used by NASA
contractors 33 years earlier, that address potential contamination.
Under the same regulation that requires these Hazard Analysis and Critical Control
Points plans, plants also must write and follow standard sanitation procedures and
test for pathogens to prove their safety system is working. FSIS also tests meat and
poultry for pathogens.
Agreement with "plants": "safety systems
are working."
Federal consumer safety inspectors review safety plans and company records that
show workers are following procedure. Meanwhile, line inspectors still check
I would say "procedures."
every carcass individually.
The government says HACCP plans have shifted the responsibility for food safety
to meat and poultry companies. But consumer advocates who once supported it and
some inspectors argue the system has given the industry too much power to
regulate itself.
Don't suddenly throw in an acronym that's going to cause a double
take. I had to read this three times to get it.
For INSPECTORS sidebar
for clarity, "a" sted
"the."
Government inspectors who stand on production lines and physically examine
every animal carcass before it becomes cuts of meat have seconds to spot signs of
disease and feces before the carcass goes by.
“I read an article the other day that some congressman said they were going to cut
the (inspection) budget because the product was 99.9 percent safe,” said Delmer
Jones, a retired federal chicken inspector from Alabama who worked a production
If this is
line for 44 years. “If only these people were required to stand on one of those
federal law,
lines.”
I would say
that for
clarity. If it's Inspectors for the Food Safety and Inspection Service, an agency within the U.S.
one law: "a Department of Agriculture, are in slaughterhouses every hour of every day they
federal law." operate. They look at chickens, turkeys, hogs and cattle for fecal contamination,
signs of tuberculosis, cancer, infections, parasites and an array of other conditions
that would make meat unhealthy or unappealing to eat.
Law permits companies to process up to 390 cattle or 964 hogs an hour. Various
studies on poultry production say it’s standard for chickens to be processed at 140
birds a minute, but the law doesn’t explicitly mention that rate.
DOCUMENT Link to federal regulations “Inspections_sidebar_inspections_Regs” in Documents - should be credited to
Food Safety and Inspection Service √
Rather, speed regulations are broken down by how many chickens each inspector
can look at in one minute. Don't follow this. If you're saying that studies and inspectors say
inspectors often operate at 35 per, make that clearer.
According to regulations, inspectors are allowed to review up to 25 chickens per
minute, giving them about 2.5 seconds with each one. However, USDA studies and
inspectors cite rates of up to 35 birds per minute.
When plants process 140 birds a minute, four inspectors are on the line, looking
inside the featherless carcasses hanging in front of them.
Jones, former head of the National Joint Council of Food Inspection Locals,
compared inspecting chickens at that speed to examining a plane as it touched
Would read better as: "as it touches down and takes off
down and took off again.
again."
“It’s completely impossible,” he said. Jones and current union leader Stan Painter,
an inspector in Alabama, said carcasses move by too fast for inspectors to catch all
New graph.
contamination, including the feces that carry dangerous pathogens such as E. coli
O157 and salmonella.
“It’s just like running a marathon in these plants,” Jones said. “We run a marathon
every day.”
For cattle, up to 13 inspectors man stations for the heads, organs and half-carcasses
and they rotate spots throughout the day, making it difficult to determine by law
how much time they have to do each job. But inspectors who spoke to News21
said they had between six and eight seconds at different stations.
“It doesn’t sound like a lot (of time), but these inspectors do this day in and day
out,” said John McConnaughhay (CQ’d), a frontline supervisor and public health
veterinarian in Nebraska. “It’s adequate time for them to do these procedures.”
VIDEO We’d like to embed this video: “Inspections_sidebar_inspectors_FSIS” in
Video folder √
"Outsides" of chickens
Inspectors eye the outside of chickens for tumors, bruises, lesions and broken legs
or wings. They check inside for scabs, fluid in the air sacs and enlarged kidneys.
The rest of the organs are looked over for discoloration and swelling.
The process for cattle varies by plant, but it’s common for inspectors to examine
the heads at one location on the production line, cutting the cheek muscles and
paying special attention to the lymph nodes, where abnormalities can indicate
disease.
At another point, different inspectors cut open and feel organs for cysts, parasites,
lesions, discoloration and inflammation. At the final station, other inspectors check
the outside of the suspended half-carcasses for feces. They also feel the meat and
look inside for abnormal kidneys, lymph nodes and muscles.
Food Safety and Inspection Service representatives wouldn’t clarify how much
time inspectors have with each carcass to complete these steps. A district manager
and a spokesman didn’t answer specific questions and pointed reporters to the
regulations. The only response the agency offered was through its “askFSIS”Change to "an" or
"the" to avoid
feature on its website that allows consumers to submit questions.
repeating its.
A staffer responding in an email wanted to know the motivation for the question
and said, “In slaughter operations inspection personnel are responsible for
conducting their inspection duties regardless of the concern for time.
Operations vary significantly and it is difficult to designate seconds per
carcass.” In a later email, the staffer said, “I am not aware that FSIS ‘tracks’
this information.”