In 1906, following the publishing and rapid consumption of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, public outrage over the deplorable conditions of the meat packing industry lead congress to swiftly craft and enact the Meat Inspection Act. This act sought to enhance the safety and oversight in almost every step of meat production. From the butcher to the kitchen table, Pork and Beef faced intense inspection, removing most dangers for the worker and the consumer.

Congress enacted a similar inspection act in 1957, the Poultry Products Inspection Act, following Poultry’s rise during World War Two as a quick and cost-effective way to feed vast numbers of soldiers and citizens. This act, like the Meat Inspection Act, codified almost every aspect of Poultry Production, from the butcher to the kitchen table.
Since the passage and enactment of these acts, standards for meat and poultry are consistently high. Thanks to the thorough work of the USDA, whose charge stems from these two acts, the food that reaches are tables is butchered, prepared, packaged, and shipped with a high degree of safety and cleanliness. But the initial production of these animals has no oversite.

In both acts, as was common at the time, congress gave little thought to the unintended environmental impacts. Corporations have taken shortcuts to produce the largest number of animals possible to enter a streamlined production process. These factory farms are known as CAFOs—Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations.

CAFOs value production over anything else. Waste from poultry CAFOs is typically sprayed on adjacent fields. In a best-case scenario, that waste is used as a natural fertilizer. This rarely happens, as the second it rains waste is washed into the nearest waterway. This is common practice and there is nothing the federal government can do to regulate this. Furthermore, bird flu, salmonella, and other bacteria or sickness originates from these unclean and unhealthy CAFO conditions.

The two aforementioned acts begin their regulatory authority at the point of butcher. There is no regulatory power of the federal government over the conditions in which animals are raised prior to their slaughter.

We write to implore you do amend or all together rewrite these inspection acts. They are outdated and lack the ability to regulate Meat and Poultry production in a modern setting. Extend Federal regulatory power to the conditions in which animals are raised. Update the regulations once again protect the meat packers and consumers.