When I heard that a writer had taken a job as a U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service line inspector at a Cargill beef slaughter facility for two months and then written a lengthy expose about his experiences, I was intrigued. I looked up the May 2013 issue of Harper’s Magazine online, and I hit the dreaded pay wall. Since I write a blog as part of my job, I figured the $19.97 one year subscription cost would qualify as a business expense, so I got out my credit card. As a public service, I would like to recommend that you save the $19.97 and not bother subscribing to Harper’s to read, The Way of All Flesh: Undercover in an industrial slaughterhouse, by Ted Conover.

For the most part, U.S. broiler and turkey processors have done a good job of reducing the percentage of Salmonella-positive carcasses found in post chill checks. Processors have employed various chemical sprays, rinses and dips along with treatment of the water in the chillers to rinse off, damage or kill enough Salmonella cells to stay in front of the performance standards established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service. Poultry processors have shown significant reductions in Salmonella tests since the post-chill carcass performance standards were first established.

"Antimicrobial resistance poses a catastrophic threat," said professor Dame Sally Davies, England’s chief medical officer. "If we don’t act now, any one of us could go into hospital in 20 years for minor surgery and die because of an ordinary infection that can’t be treated by antibiotics. Routine operations like hip replacements or organ transplants could be deadly because of the risk of infection. That’s why governments and organizations across the world, including the World Health Organization and G8, need to take this seriously."

If Congress does enact comprehensive immigration reform that includes a robust guest worker program, I don’t think it will provide a long-term solution for the shortage of eager applicants for jobs in poultry plants and on poultry farms.

All egg farms with 3,000 or more layers that produce shell eggs for human consumption now fall under the Egg Safety Rule which requires each facility to have a plan in place for the prevention of Salmonella enteriditis contamination.

An outbreak of H7N3 avian influenza in the Mexican state of Aguascalientes was confirmed on January 8, 2013. Aguascalientes, located in central Mexico, is close to the state of Jalisco where a H7N3 outbreak occurred in the summer of 2012. Mexican authorities have reported to the OIE, the world animal health organization, that around 300,000 laying hens have been culled from two table egg farms as a first step in stopping spread of the virus.

At least one former plant manager and current Sanderson Farms executive may not be excited about the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service’s proposed new chicken slaughter inspection system.