Eye of the Storm
Since last March, I have submitted multiple versions of my food safety plan to the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service.
This plan describes exactly how I will keep the food I make in my food manufacturing kitchen safe from biological, chemical and physical hazards.
No bugs, bleach or BBs allowed in your food.
Pretty important stuff.
I want my food safety plan to be comprehensive, yet realistic to implement.
I’m not making my plan up as I go along. Days on end of food safety classes and tests galore taught me how to avoid risky production practices.
My first plan delineated details as miniscule as the color of brooms I would use to sweep the floor – one color would sweep in the area where I prep the raw ingredients while another color would sweep the area where the sealed pouches come out of the retort pressure cooker so I wouldn’t cause cross-contamination.
A month after submitting it, that plan flunked because it was too detailed.
So I spent another month combing through every aspect of the plan, wordsmithing within the murky labyrinth of the foreign language of official federal codes.
My second plan described every step of the production process, from accepting or rejecting incoming inventory to how to organize a recall if needed.
I emailed 63 individual files to the reviewers.
Nobody seemed to be able to organize them, even though they were labeled with each step of the process.
Six weeks later, the reviewers said I had forgotten to include one file.
I sent the file that had been a part of the first plan.
Three weeks went by without a word.
In my third plan, I substituted every minute detail with more realistic statements such as “preparation equipment will be cleaned as often as necessary” and “equipment will be disassembled as much as necessary to be cleaned effectively.”
I included tests I promise to perform to verify safety measures.
I felt as if I was aiming an arrow at a mysterious moving target.
Meanwhile, I’m making loan payments while waiting to generate income.
Three local USDA food safety inspectors have been helping me get my plan approved.
They offer constructive criticism and practical advice.
They understand my frustration.
But my plan approval comes from above their pay grades.
Clearly, someone doesn’t like my plan, but I have to wonder whether there is more to this situation.
Turns out, there is.
Like every other federal agency, the USDA FSIS is in chaos.
Anyone and everyone who can find a different job is jumping ship.
Experienced people can find other jobs, so those left in the agency either are very close to retirement or only recently joined the agency.
They are still learning how to prevent food poisoning – like the recent lettuce, jalapeno pepper, egg and sprout outbreaks.
If they don’t get it right, people might die.
On top of inexperience that fosters indecision, positions are unfilled so the people who are left have to inspect more facilities.
Montana inspectors who used to inspect five facilities – one each working day in a week– now have 14 or more to check.
They spend hours driving hundreds of miles to put eyes on what we all will put in our mouths.
The facilities that are already operating can go about their business if the inspector is not there because they have a food safety plan in place.
I own the only new, yet to be approved, food manufacturing plant in Montana.
D.C. politics have reached Conrad, Montana.
The hurricane of federal chaos swirls around all of us.
I sit in the eye of the storm, waiting.