New Pork Processing Rules Raise Food, Worker Safety Concerns

Oct 11, 2019

MINNEAPOLIS – Several labor unions filed a federal lawsuit in Minneapolis this week over controversial U.S. Department of Agriculture rule changes for regulating pork processing plants.

The plaintiffs say a key concern is a provision that removes maximum line speeds when bringing hogs to slaughter. They say allowing faster line speeds compromises worker safety as well as food safety.

Kim VanderWall, an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of Veterinary Population Medicine, said it could open the door for the spread of viruses in the supply chain.

"You could imagine if the carcasses are coming by more quickly," she said, "we might not detect the same things that we would detect if it was going a little bit slower."

The USDA has said the changes are intended to modernize the pork-processing system. They also include reducing the number of federal meat inspectors on processing lines by 40%. The complaint alleges that a combination of faster line speeds and fewer inspectors is asking for trouble, and aims to block the changes.

The trouble isn't only on the processing lines. VanderWaal said another example of how the changes could compromise food safety is through transportation. Even if a truck that arrives at a processing plant is perfectly clean, she said, all it takes is one tainted batch of product leaving the facility to create problems.

"Sometimes, they leave the slaughter plants with detectable virus on the surface of those trucks," she said, "and those trucks can go back to pick up more pigs within a farm, and that can be a potential way for farm spread of viruses."

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Video: US Soy: Pig growth is impaired by soybean meal displacement in the diet

Eric van Heugten, PhD, professor and swine extension specialist at North Carolina State University, recently spoke at the Iowa Swine Day Pre-Conference Symposium, titled Soybean Meal 360°: Expanding our horizons through discoveries and field-proven feeding strategies for improving pork production. The event was sponsored by Iowa State University and U.S. Soy.

Soybean meal offers pig producers a high-value proposition. It’s a high-quality protein source, providing essential and non-essential amino acids to the pig that are highly digestible and palatable. Studies now show that soybean meal provides higher net energy than current National Research Council (NRC) requirements. Plus, soybean meal offers health benefits such as isoflavones and antioxidants as well as benefits with respiratory diseases such as porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS).

One of several ingredients that compete with the inclusion of soybean meal in pig diets is dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS).

“With DDGS, we typically see more variable responses because of the quality differences depending on which plant it comes from,” said Dr. van Heugten. “At very high levels, we often see a reduction in performance especially with feed intake which can have negative consequences on pig performance, especially in the summer months when feed intake is already low and gaining weight is at a premium to get them to market.”

Over the last few decades, the industry has also seen the increased inclusion of crystalline amino acids in pig diets.

“We started with lysine at about 3 lbs. per ton in the diet, and then we added methionine and threonine to go to 6 to 8 lbs. per ton,” he said. “Now we have tryptophan, isoleucine and valine and can go to 12 to 15 lbs. per ton. All of these, when price competitive, are formulated into the diet and are displacing soybean meal which also removes the potential health benefits that soybean meal provides.”