That’s right. Bye-bye. Ciao. Adieu.

Ten years ago I was bored in my early retirement days before I had any consulting work lined up and read Meatingplace religiously. I also responded with comments when I felt FSIS and/or its employees were being inaccurately criticized.

Yep, I defended the inspectors and their bargaining unit.

Janie Gabbett called me out of the blue and asked if I would become a weekly blogger and share my insights on food safety issues, especially those related to USDA/FSIS.

Why not?

After a few years, it was becoming harder to come up with a new idea each week. Dr. Jim Marsden agreed, and we decided to alternate Monday blogs. Then he left for Chipotle.

Over the ten years, a few individuals took regular opposition to my way of thinking and signed their names, which I respect. Plenty of others disagreed with anonymous names, including some of those inspectors I defended during my time as USDA. It’s OK. It kept me sharp and the conversations lively.

In fact, the best part of my blogging has been reading the thoughts of others as they commented and added their thoughts and insights.

There are a lot of informed and educated readers out there. I just wish they could spread their knowledge to those who are so misinformed by the media, their friends and social media outlets.

I think back to that Meatingplace magazine cover page a few years ago that read:

SLIMED: What the Hell Happened?

I think that fiasco pretty well sums up what the meat and poultry industry is up against today, and maybe is a reason I continued to blog and make public presentations for ten short years.

We have a new grocery opening up here in Fort Collins this week, a chain called Lucky’s that is supposedly a slightly cheaper version of Whole Foods.

Their very first ad in the daily Coloradoan claimed their chicken is hormone free.

It never quits.

My biggest regret in the 14 years I have been actively involved in food safety is that I could not get risk-based Inspection for meat and poultry installed at FSIS. Congresswoman DeLauro was convinced it might reduce the number of inspectors and blocked it.

So it has been over 110 years since we started inspecting plants, and the arrangement regarding time spent in each plant remains the same; regardless of the plant’s food safety record, and regardless of the risk of the product being produced, each processing plant on an inspector’s daily route gets the same amount of inspection as measured in hours and minutes.

What is inspected has changed, especially since HACCP was initiated, but the time spent remains the same.

If you want to cut down the number of drunk drivers on the road you do not put the state patrol outside of churches on Sunday morning. (Thank you Rosemary for that quote.)

And if you want to cut down on foodborne illnesses, you do not dedicate the same amount of inspection time in a cooked ham plant as you do a raw ground chicken producing plant.

Our risk-based inspection plan was an evolving one, and was not perfected when we were forced to stop the planning. Though it does serve to remind me of one of my favorite sayings that helped me get through ten years of public service dealing with bureaucrats, politicians, industry, consumer groups, unions and others: Do not let perfect get in the way of better.

Thanks for reading and sometimes responding along the ten years.

Toodle Loo.

(Editor’s Note: I would like to personally thank Richard Raymond for his consistent contributions to the professional discussions on Meatingplace.com. It takes a strong backbone to blog on this site; our readers do not pull their punches. We welcome it all, as we believe there is great value in our informed readers debating the issues facing the protein industry today. Thank you, Richard, for being one of our first and most consistent bloggers. We wish you well. – Rita Jane Gabbett, executive editor, Meatingplace)

Adios amigos

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