The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA's) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is responsible for inspecting most meat, poultry, and processed egg products for safety, wholesomeness, and proper labeling. Federal inspectors or their state counterparts are present at all times in virtually all slaughter plants and for at least part of each day in establishments that further process meat and poultry products. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), is responsible for ensuring the safety of virtually all other human foods, including seafood, and for animal drugs and feed ingredients. Several significant changes in meat and poultry inspection programs were included in the 2008 farm bill ( P.L. 110-246 ), signed into law in June 2008. These include permitting certain state-inspected meat and poultry products to enter interstate commerce, just like USDA-inspected products; bringing catfish under mandatory USDA inspection; requiring an inspected establishment to notify USDA if it believes that an adulterated or misbranded product has entered commerce; and requiring establishments to prepare and maintain written recall plans. Recently, the effectiveness of the FSIS inspection system has been compared favorably (by some) to FDA's, particularly with regard to its import safety program. At the same time, recalls of fresh and processed meat and poultry products, often due to microbiological contamination, and illness outbreaks caused by such products, continue to challenge the industry and government regulators. These incidents have fueled interest in a number of bills in the 110 th and 111 th Congresses to change other elements of USDA's authorizing statutes. What, if any, additional changes should lawmakers consider to improve safety oversight of meat and poultry production? This law as amended (21 U.S.C. 601 et seq .) has long required USDA to inspect all cattle, sheep, swine, goats, horses, mules, and other equines brought into any plant to be slaughtered and processed into products for human consumption. Since passage of the FY2006 USDA appropriation ( P.L. 109-97 , Section 798), these types of animals are now called "amenable species." P.L. 109-97 also gave the Secretary of Agriculture the discretion to add additional species to the list. As noted, the 2008 farm bill makes catfish an amenable species. This law as amended (21 U.S.C. 451 et seq .) makes poultry inspection mandatory for any domesticated birds intended for use as human food. The current list of included species is chickens, turkeys, ducks, geese, guineas, ratites (ostrich, emu, and rhea), and squabs (pigeons up to one month old). Under this law as amended (7 U.S.C. 1621), FSIS also provides voluntary inspection for buffalo, antelope, reindeer, elk, migratory waterfowl, game birds, and rabbits, which the industry can request on a fee-for-service basis. These meat and poultry species (which are not specifically covered by the mandatory inspection statutes) are still within the purview of FDA under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA, 21 U.S.C. 301 et seq. ), whether or not inspected under the voluntary FSIS program. FDA has jurisdiction over meat products from such species in interstate commerce, even if they bear the USDA inspection mark. This law as amended (21 U.S.C. 1031 et seq .) is the authority under which FSIS assures the safety of liquid, frozen, and dried egg products, domestic and imported, and the safe disposition of damaged and dirty eggs. FDA holds regulatory authority over shell eggs in restaurants and stores. FSIS's legal inspection responsibilities begin when animals arrive at slaughterhouses, and they generally end once products leave processing plants. Certain custom slaughter and most retail store and restaurant activities are exempt from federal inspection; however, they may be under state inspection. No meat or poultry establishment can slaughter or process products for human consumption until FSIS approves in advance its plans and specifications for the premises, equipment, and operating procedures. Once this approval is granted and operations begin, the plant must continue to follow a detailed set of rules that cover such things as proper lighting, ventilation, and water supply; cleanliness of equipment and structural features; and employee sanitation procedures. Plants are required to have a Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan for their slaughter and/or processing operations. Essentially, a plant must identify each point in the process where contamination could occur, called a "critical control point," have a plan to control it, and document and maintain records. Under HACCP regulations, all operations must have site-specific standard operating procedures (SOPs) for sanitation. USDA inspectors check records to verify a plant's compliance. FSIS inspects all meat and poultry animals to look for signs of disease, contamination, and other abnormal conditions, both before and after slaughter ("antemortem" and "postmortem," respectively), on a continuous basis—meaning that no animal may be slaughtered and dressed unless an inspector has examined it. One or more federal inspectors are on the line during all hours the plant is operating. The inspection statutes appear to be silent on how frequently USDA inspector must visit facilities that produce processed products like hot dogs, lunch meat, prepared dinners, and soups. Under current policies, processing plants visited once every day by an FSIS inspector are considered to be under continuous inspection in keeping with the laws. Inspectors monitor operations, check sanitary conditions, examine ingredient levels and packaging, review records, verify HACCP processes, and conduct statistical sampling and testing of products during their on-site visits. The HACCP rule also mandates two types of microbial testing: for generic E. coli and for Salmonella . Levels of these two organisms are indicators of conditions that either suppress or encourage the spread of such potentially dangerous bacteria as Campylobacter and E. coli O157:H7, as well as Salmonella itself. Test results (plants test for E. coli and FSIS for Salmonella ) help FSIS inspectors verify that plant sanitation procedures are working, and to identify and assist plants whose process controls may be underperforming. FSIS has a range of enforcement tools to prevent adulterated or mislabeled meat and poultry from reaching consumers. On a day-to-day basis, if plant conditions or procedures are found to be unsanitary, an FSIS inspector can, by refusing to perform inspection, temporarily halt the plant's operation until the problem is corrected. FSIS can condemn contaminated, adulterated, and misbranded products, or parts of them, and detain them so they cannot progress down the marketing chain. FSIS does not have mandatory recall authority; if potentially dangerous or mislabeled products do enter commerce, the agency relies on establishments to voluntarily recall them. Other tools include warning letters for minor violations; requests that companies voluntarily recall a potentially unsafe product; a court-ordered product seizure if such a request is denied; and referral to federal attorneys for criminal prosecution. Prosecutions under certain conditions may lead to the withdrawal of federal inspection from offending firms or individuals, which results in plant closure. Federal appropriations pay for most, but not all, mandatory inspection. For FY2010, FSIS received an annual appropriation of approximately $1 billion. In addition, FSIS uses revenue from fees paid by the meat and poultry industries for FSIS inspection that occurs beyond regularly scheduled shifts and on holidays, and by private laboratories that apply for FSIS certification to perform official meat testing and sampling. In FY2010, revenue from the fees is expected to add approximately $150 million in additional program support. FSIS carries out its duties with about 9,400 total staff (full-time equivalent). Approximately 7,800 of FSIS's employees, roughly 1,000 of them veterinarians, are in approximately 6,200 establishments and import inspection facilities nationwide. Twenty-seven states have their own meat and/or poultry inspection programs covering nearly 1,900 small or very small establishments. The states run the programs cooperatively with FSIS, which provides up to 50% of the funds for operating them, comprising about $65 million of the total FSIS budget annually. A state program operating under a cooperative agreement with FSIS must demonstrate that its system is equivalent to federal inspection. However, state-inspected meat and poultry products are limited to intrastate commerce only. In states that have discontinued their inspection systems for meat or poultry (or both), FSIS has assumed responsibility for inspection at the formerly state-inspected plants. However, actual inspection is performed by state personnel. Approximately 360 meat and poultry establishments in nine states are covered by a separate federal-state program, the so-called Talmadge-Aiken plants. Under this program, USDA has signed cooperative agreements with states whereby state employees are used to conduct federal inspections, and passed products carry the federal mark of inspection. Established by the Talmadge-Aiken Act of 1962 (7 U.S.C. 450), the arrangement was intended to achieve federal coverage in remote locations to offset the higher cost of assigning federal inspectors there. FSIS conducts evaluations of foreign meat safety programs and visits establishments to determine that they are providing a level of safety equivalent to that of U.S. safeguards. No foreign plant can ship meat or poultry to the United States unless its country has received such an FSIS determination. Once they reach U.S. ports of entry, meat and poultry import shipments must first clear Department of Homeland Security (DHS) inspection to assure that only shipments from countries free of certain animal and human disease hazards are allowed entry.