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The New York Times reports that private food inspectors aren’t equipped to do their jobs properly, and have missed key signs that have led to the largest food-borne illness outbreaks in U.S. history.
According to a report obtained by The Times, a private food inspector deemed the “food safety level” at the Blakley, Ga., facility owned by Peanut Corp. of America at “Superior” levels in March 2008. However, that report contradicts actual scientific evidence gained late last year that shows the PCA facility had been shipping chopped peanuts, peanut paste and peanut butter for at least 9 months.
This level of contamination at this – as well as at least one other processing facility – has led to one of the largest food-borne illness outbreaks in U.S. history. Nine people have died and at least 22,000 are estimated to have contracted salmonella poisoning from eating tainted peanut-based products.
NYT revealed that the private food inspector, hired by Kellogg Co. – one of the many food companies that gets its peanut paste supply from PCA – wasn’t even supposed to test for salmonella during his inspections.
In fact, the private inspector was given less than a day to inspect the PCA facility which processes millions of pounds of peanuts a month. Also, PCA knew when the inspector was due for his audit and clearly swept all evidence of foul play out of his sight.
Food companies have relied on private inspectors because the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory agencies can’t keep up with, or don’t have the manpower to properly inspect these massive food facilities regularly.
Further investigations by NYT showed that private food inspectors deemed facilities linked to massive food recalls in the last few years safe, too. One example was the Hallmark-Westland meat processing facility in California, which passed 17 different audits by a private inspector, but was later shown in a leaked video to be abusing cattle and even sending sick from the herd to slaughter.
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