Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
Private food auditors inspecting food plants
Massachusetts attorney Tom Kiley, concentrates on legal issues regarding defective products. According to a recent article in the New York Times, government officials are overwhelmed with inspecting the nation’s food supply and are turning to private auditors to do the job.
The article, documents that it was a private auditor who missed the salmonella contamination at the Peanut Corporation of America plant in southwest Georgia. Although the inspector gave the plant a superior rating, the plant shipped out contaminated peanut products for nine months, and those products sickened 22,500 people and killed nine.
The article examines other cases of food poisoning outbreaks in recent years and auditors failed to detect problems at plants where contaminated products later made people sick. Although audits are not required by the government, some food companies are requiring suppliers to be audited as a way to ensure safety and minimize liability. However, the inspections vary widely and some companies do an audit for as little as $1,000; in contrast to the $8,000 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), spends to inspect a plant. The private auditors inspect manufacturing plants, not the suppliers that provide ingredients to those facilities. They also do not usually test the actual food products for contamination.
Although both the food industry and federal officials say they are aware of the problems with private audits, the FDA recently proposed expanding the role of private auditors to inspect the more than 200,000 foreign plants that ship food to the United States. The FDA is proposing to implement a voluntary certification program that would toughen audit standards and alert federal authorities of problems.
There are more than 200 companies and numerous independent operators in private food inspection. One of those private companies is the American Institute of Baking, the private auditing company involved in the inspection of the Peanut Corporation of America plant. In addition to the peanut factories, the organization's 120 auditors handle clients who process meat, seafood, vegetables, spices, oils and dairy products.
Costco, Kraft Foods and Darden Restaurants and other food manufacturers have developed detailed plans to prevent food safety hazards. They also supplement private audits with their own inspections. These plans include testing of ingredients and plant surfaces for microbes.
The FDA provides some non-binding recommendations for private auditors on its website. These recommendations are for manufacturers that sell foods to the public, such as retailers and food service providers, to make sure these foods meet safety (as well as other) standards. The Federal government supports voluntary certification programs as one way to help ensure products meet US safety and security standards and to allow Federal agencies to target their resources more effectively. These guidelines provide one of the steps in FDA’s future recognition of one or private certification programs for particular product types. The FDA anticipates that some of those programs that focus on food safety will be eligible for recognition as FDA moves forward in this area, either in their present form or with future programs. The FDA hopes that recognition of existing programs may lessen the need for audits from multiple certification bodies in the future.
