Panel grills head of food safety agency on bonuses

Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Richard Raymond will be returning to the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee after irate panel members this week pledged to summon him back.

At Thursday's hearing, members were upset about Raymond's answers to questions about employee bonuses and plans for reducing the frequency of meat inspections.

Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee Chairwoman Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., asked Raymond why the Food Safety Inspection Service had paid nearly $500,000 in bonuses to Senior Executive Service employees last year when the agency ran short of money and cut some activities before asking Congress for additional money.

"It is incomprehensible to me how an agency that nearly went bankrupt in fiscal year 2006 and is cutting training for front-line inspectors gave out almost half a million dollars in bonuses to senior executives," DeLauro said. "This is money that could have been used for more training or for more inspectors, but however you look at it, it should have been spent for the public health."

Raymond said the bonus money was departmental and the agency could not reclaim it.

Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee ranking member Jack Kingston, R-Ga., asked Raymond to provide the subcommittee with a detailed accounting of the bonuses. "This committee has been caught flat-footed," Kingston said. "The inability to shift that money to cut areas seemed a little shocking to us."

Raymond also presented his plan for FSIS to move from a system of daily inspection of slaughterhouses and processing plants to a risk-based system whereby inspectors would spend more time in plants with poor safety records.

"Under an enhanced risk-based system in processing, we're still going to go to each plant every day," Raymond said. "But within the inspector's tour of duty, some plants will get a closer and more intensive look than others."

Raymond said he intended to move forward with changing the system of inspecting meat and poultry processing plants in April without going through a formal federal rule-making process. DeLauro said she is not opposed to risk-based inspection, but she does not believe FSIS is ready to move to the new system.

"This is a serious mistake," DeLauro said. "You lack the data in order to do this."

Raymond said he had recently been informed that for 30 years inspections of about 250 small meat plants have not been not conducted every day even though federal law requires it.

"That is going to stop," Raymond said. "You are in violation of the law," DeLauro told him.

Raymond agreed but said he planned to hire 186 more employees so the inspections could be conducted.

Kingston and DeLauro told Raymond they would call him back when more members could attend the hearing.

Kingston explained to Raymond that while he and DeLauro have different voting records, he has an insight into the next hearing. "She has saved the hard questions for later," Kingston warned.