Hello friends. Welcome back to our third week of The Meat We Eat. And this week our focus is predominately on discussing the system that we have in the U.S.. To provide safe and wholesome animal protein products specifically red meat and poultry. So, here initially we're going to talk about the USDA food safety inspection service and what they provide as we think about providing wholesome products for domestic and international customers. So this is a pretty busy slide here as we think about the mission statement. Of USDA Food Safety Inspection Service, that's what that stands for, FSIS. Now in subsequent, lectures here we will discuss, another, division of USDA pretty extensively. As we talk about grading, and kind of how we promulgate The grades to meat and poultry and how that associates with value but that USDA AMS agricultural marketing service. Two completely different entities that are everyone both domestic and international consumers they recognize USDA is very associated with the meat and poultry products. But two big divisions there. And that, what we'll talk about this week is safety and wholesomeness. And that's predominantly USDA Food Safety Inspection Service and then we talk about grading, grades and value. That's the ag marketing service, alright? So let's look at this that's bolded, here. It says: insuring that the nation's commercial supply. Of meat, poultry, and egg products is safe, wholesome, correctly labeled and packaged. And there you go, that is the mission of what USDA FSIS is. So if we think back to our initial history lesson that we had the first week of class. We talked about Upton Sinclair, and his initiatives that he had, through riding the jungle. That subsequent year, then the, Federal Meat Inspection Act as, was, was established. And there initially it dealt with, you know, establishment sanitary condition and just. Doing what we can to ensure, that to the best of our ability, we produce wholesome and safe products. Next step there if we think about the progression of meat inspection in this country, there in the late 60s we did establish the Wholesome Meat Act. And predominantly what that dealt with. Is to establish that steaks could develop their own inspection service that could be equal to or in excess of USDA FSIS inspection, now since then, several states that formerly had state inspection have allowed those programs to go by the wayside and just be [UNKNOWN] or. re-devel, taken under the wing of USDA FSIS there in the late seventies. Established the Humane Slaughter Act stating that, other than ritual slaughter, all animals that will be offered for USDA FSIS inspection, they must be rendered insensible to pain. And something that's really transcended our business,. Happened some now 14 years ago, as the USDA established the HACCP program, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point food safety system. And we'll talk more about it later, but really what it did. It took us from the perspective of, of purely being regulatory, and that I. Let's say that there's me, and, and you, we own. I'm the inspector, and you own the facility. And if my being your instructor, this was my interpretation of the rules, and this is how I like things. And so, then when you got a different inspector, their interpretation might be completely different, or its possible that it was rather different. And, so what the HACCP system allowed us to do was to be more science based and have more effective accountability throughout the system, we'll talk about that more later. Okay, so I work in extension here at the University of Florida. And one of the things that we work to do is help our small processors, niche meat marketers and folks that are in the further process business, we have a lot of those facilities in our great state. So when somebody contacts me and says, hey I want to establish and further process. Products for sale in multiple facilities. This is what I send them. These are the prerequisites, not pardon me, these are the initial steps we need to take to establish the grand of inspection. So we have to have proof of our water source, is safe and potable. We have to have letter from our sewage system accountability. And, we have to have accountability, that we're meeting regulatory performance standards relative to everything that's a food contact surface, and really even outside of that as well, must be easily cleaned and sanitizable. And then ultimately we'd file a, a grant for inspection. So, we've mentioned this a little bit earlier, but only animals that are slaughtered under USDA-FSIS inspection, can really be sold commercially or exported, 'kay? and, all products made this country that have greater than 3% red meat or poultry within them, and they're sold for redistribution. They must be, they must be processed, not only slaughtered, but then further processed under FSIS inspection. So something that, when we have our own campus class, we'll always talk about this, and we'll mention it now. So, every retail establishment that you go to in this country, if you think about going to, I don't know, every, Kroger, Whole Foods, Winn-Dixie, whatever the case may be. Those facilities, they, when they take and they cut meat or they make some ground beef or whatever the case may be, those product, they were, those animals were certainly slaughtered under FSIS inspection and and the products were cut into pieces, wholesale cuts under FSIS inspection. But, probably any place that in the back of the shop, if they're cutting meat, that actually does not occur under USDA-FSIS inspection. It'd probably be under local health department or state department of ag. So, just something to kind of consider there. One other thing about USDA-FSIS inspection, relative to its amenability, and what that means is that. Those species, which USDA-FSIS will inspect, without charge, 'Kay? And that is right. The cost for inspection, it's borne by the taxpayers. So this is required in order to sell products under inspection. Then, yeah. It, this, this is, you are allowed as a USDA processor that's received the grant of inspection eight hours of inspected processing a day for all days, five days a week that aren't federal holidays, okay? All right. So as we think about all facilities, I don't know how many there are in this country that operate under USDA FSIS inspection but there are thousands and thousands, all of them regardless of what they do whether they make chicken nuggets, if it's a lamb slaughter facility, if it's a beef grinder, whatever it is. Their day in, day out accountability, things that they are required to do before they are going to receive the grant of inspection. We've turned in all the stuff about the portability of our water, and some of our facility management stuff. But, we will be required that we will have a validated or a pass plan for whatever products that we produce. It won't be validated initially, but ultimately, it'll be validated. We have to have written sanitation standard operating procedures and other SOPs. And we've gotta have approved formulations and labels, okay? So those are the things that are required. So what is HACCP here? And I kind of made reference to this system earlier. But it is. kind of like it says there. It is a system of risk accountability. It's a management tool to account for food safety risk thru out the production chain, to insure to the best of our ability, that we protect the product from biological, chemical, and physical hazard. It's not a test and hold system. It's not a zero tolerance. System, for the most part. It's one that is designed throughout the process to minimize risk. Thinking about where it comes from. Scientists at the Pillsbury company had worked for. Folks at NASA, to develop a, at NASA, they're all at NASA we don't want our folks going up and getting sick in space, it'd be a bad deal, right? And so, with that, they visited with food scientists from Pillsbury, and Pillsbury developed this system of food safety accountability. And it's worked very effectively throughout the duration of the NASA space program. To m y knowledge, there's never any instances of food borne illness, there. And so, with time, particularly after the Jack in the Box outbreak there in the early 1990s. Acid was established and man dated for all red meat and poultry processing, we've already hit on some of these entities here, but to, to have a effective HACCP plan, these are tHE other things that you have to do, you have to account, in red meat and poultry, you have to account for. What you're going to do in terms of your pest management you have to have a solid set of written good manufacturing practices. Good manufacturing practices are kind of like it says there, Broad practices that, that deal with kind of overall plan management and personal issues relative to sanitation, hand washing. If you're sick, don't come to work, those are good manufacturing practices, and Sanitary Standard Operating Procedures, they're much more targeted that, in that they, it's kind of an instruction manual oftentimes, to how to clean this given piece of equipment. All right. A HACCP plan is going to be specific for whatever we're doing, ok. If we're talking about poultry slaughter, we're going to have a given set of hazards that we'll have to encounter there. If we're talking about making hot dogs, the set of hazards that we have are completely different. Let's say and let's jump fields, let's say that we're talking about making orange juice or. Bag salad hazards that we would have there would be different, okay? For those juice and, and bag salad, they're not covered under USDAA emphasis but most will have, juice will certainly have, they're required to have a HAACP plan, so what we do here is for all those steps throughout our production system, we account for. Biological, chemical, and physical hazards that we think we could encounter along the way. And so, that's what this initial, step, this initial principle of the HACCP system is, is to conduct a hazard analysis. We have a thorough. Flow diagram from start to finish for the products that we produce, okay? We've got this accurate, verified flow diagram. And then we come through and we say: okay, what biological, chemical and/or physical hazards each step along the way as we make this hot dog. Or as whatever product that we have. Could be introduced or minimized along the way. Okay? Then from there we determine which of those are absolutely critical to ensuring the safety of the product. There's several things that will be control points that will be important but there's going to be a few probably that we decipher that are absolutely fundamental. To the whole smiths of the products that we've produced. Once we've determined those, we'll decipher, okay how do we know that what we're doing here is within our correct level. How do we know that what we are producing, that whatever we said was our risk here is within control. That's what a critical limit is. How do we monitor what we are going to do? Who's going to do it, how frequently is it done. And then who ultimately comes back and checks the checker. That's what verification is. When we do exceed what we said we were going to do from a food safety perspective relative to, to our critical limit, what do we do to correct it? Okay? And then how do we ensure that products that could be injurious to health don't enter, enter commerce? That's what a corrective action is. Verification and validation. We don't have validation there, but collectively verification is essentially checking the checker. Validation is the idea of what we are doing to ensure food safety, does it work? And then the last step here, it goes throughout the system but we want to have. Accountability and effective, accurate record keeping, for every step everything that we do on a day in day out basis, 'kay? So, we gotta, for whatever products that we produce, we gotta have this together, before we will receive the grant of inspection. And then this is absolutely critical on a day in day out basis, to maintain. Proper records to ensure. I mean, it's fundamental to be able to sell the product otherwise we won't be able to do that. It won't kill that. So, and this is a picture here of our hazard analysis that we have for beef slaughter all the way through fabrication here at the university meat laboratory. So you can see our processing steps there. It says receiving and. Washing animals, stunning, and so forth and then we have biological, physical hazards, chemical hazards that can be identified? Is this a potential food safety hazard? Is it significant justification for that? And those things that you determine to be potentially severe and reasonably likely to occur they'll go forward to your critical control point decision tree. And ultimately you'll arrive at what you think your critical control points are. 'Kay? So, I've got just a scosh ahead of myself here, but as we come back, this would be, we said that you gotta have [UNKNOWN] plan. We hit on that. You have to have a good set of written. Sanitary standard operating procedures. And this right here is just a how to list of what to do in terms of ensuring your safety. And to ensure that we do a good job with, cleaning this two pieces of equipment here. So we've got a band saw and a grinder here. And you can see the protocol. You can read through that there, step by step. What we have trained our employees to do so that we get a good clean on all of our prop, on all of our equipment 'Kay? Alright, so. Is we think about, about the products that we're going to make, this is another thing that is absolutely required before we will. Get the stamp of inspection for the products that we produce. So we must have an approved label for all the formulations, and all the products that we are going to produce under FSIS inspection. And that's, that, I mean that has to be on file with FSIS by the time that you operate under inspection. So yeah, just like it states here. There has to be truth in labeling and, certainly no product which would, be deciphered to be injurious to health would be allowed to, to go into commerce. USDA APHIS is particularly accountable, most of the, recalls that we have in this country are due to undeclared allergens. And so Gotta account for those as we turn in, [UNKNOWN] other additives and you have to account for those certain when you turn in your label. Alright, so, seven essential features that we would have of a label if we're selling a product at food service, or, pardon me, at retail. This is what would be required. So, the name of the product is going to be required on every label. An ingredient statement, and that's particular the case here if we have components, if we just have a single ingredient product, then its not obviously we've only had a single ingredient, right? The identity of the manufacturer. The name, the location, where they are at the weight of the product, the stamp of inspection, the inspection legend, the, the bug that goes on the, the, the package. A nutrition label. This is going to. There are some omissions. We'll show you slide here in a second. Here at meat laboratory, our label. Yeah everything we make is under FIS inspection we're small enough facility that we don't have to have a nutrition label but essentially anything that would be bought commercially or internationally it's made under FIS inspection, it came from this facility that probably is large enough that you're required to have a nutritional label. And if it's not shelf stable. Then we gotta have safe handling instructions. So, those are the seven things. Name, ingredient statement, who the manufacturer is, weight, inspection bug, nutrition label, and safe handling instruction. And if there's anything else you gotta have a marketing claim on there, so. This is just a picture of a fresh pork from the university meat laboratory, and you can see we've got the title, safe handling, weight, our processing bug, location. We've got all those things, so we don't have to have, in this instance we don't have to have a nutrition label because we're a small enough facility. That it's not required, and I think we hit all, and it's a single ingredient deal. So we hit all the marks there. This'd be a picture of a backside of a label from a further processed product, and so we don't see the inspection bug or anything like that. But this would just be the, the core nutrition facts ingredients, so this is a multi ingredient product, and you can see its going to be listed in you know, those, the most predominant at the first, and those that are the fewest, smallest percent at the bottom and then the nutrition fact component is there at the bottom, which is again, is required for all. Products of con, from, made from processors of any size. Okay. Every facility that operates under FSIS inspection, whether we talk about again, somebody that's making hot dogs, somebody that's in the poultry slaughter business, whatever it is. Every facility, every day that they operate. These are the things they're accountable for. Their pre-operational sanitation inspection. Their additional standard operating procedure log. And their HACCP monitoring. So all of them, that's absolutely going to be required. He is our pre-operational checklist that we have for the university meat laboratory. So you can see here by a different room, in our processing room and the cutting room. Things that are moveable, knives, etc. We have to mark off that we have done our pre operational inspection, then periodically relative to what the public health information system tells USDA [UNKNOWN] inspector, they will double check the efficacy of our pre operational inspection to ensure we are doing a good job in terms of our sanitation. And so I've already talked a lot about HACCP here, but for all of the just to kind of bring this home here. All of the products that we produce, at the University of Florida meat laboratory here. This is kind of a meat documentation here of our critical control points for all of our different HACCP. Processes. So we have slaughter beef, pork and lamb, a little bit of goat here and there. And so would be those our, we have two critical control points, which are biological for that. We're making raw, ground fresh sausage. Concerns that we have for that. Critical control points there. Ground fresh ground beef. And then for our further processed ham and bacon, we see those. And then for heat treated, not fully cooked smoked sausage, you see that there's the [UNKNOWN], and this goes through, as we went through out hazard analysis, these were the things that we deciphered to be absolutely critical to the safety of the products that we produce. You can see the critical limits there, how frequently it's monitored there under monitoring frequency, how ver, verification of that, and then the corrective action that we take. In the instance we have exceed our critical length.' Kay? So, that kind of gets us to a starting point as we begin to discuss about inspection. Next time we'll talk about specifically what goes on in terms of slaughter inspection. Thank you, we'll see you soon.
