There were many crazy encounters while I was at the USDA, and I have been asked to pen a few blogs about the best of them.

Any encounter with the theatrical, publicity seeking Congresswoman from Connecticut, Democrat Rosa DeLauro, was almost guaranteed to be crazy.

The craziest was one year when the Democrats were in control of the House and she was the Chair of the House Ag Appropriations Committee. She did not really care about the appropriations, but she did want explanations of why FSIS thought we should import cooked chicken from China, why we could not get Salmonella numbers on poultry down and why we thought risk-based inspection would make food safety better.

I guess I got crazy and talked more than she talked, a great big no-no in DC.

She announced that the hearing was so much fun she would continue it next week; same place, same time.

Oops. Communication folks and the chief of staff at the USDA were not very happy. In fact, they went crazy.

Another crazy was the fact that inspectors were dropping in on processing plants that cooked or smoked meat like hams and jerky on the weekends, taking ten minutes max to check the current temperature.

But FSIS rules and regs state the minimum that could be charged for overtime was two hours; and the plants had to pay the overtime, not the taxpayers as was done for regular inspection within regular working hours. So basically, for ten minutes time, the inspectors were getting paid the equivalent of three hours of work on both Saturdays and Sundays on the plants’ dime.

AAMP asked me to look into this practice.

I did, and it turned out nearly 100 percent of these plants recorded the temperature of the ovens around the clock, and they also received text messages or phone alerts if the temperature ever was outside the required range.

So why couldn’t the inspector simply look at the recorded temperatures for Saturday and Sunday on Monday morning when in the plant during normal business hours and getting paid by FSIS?

You can do the math.

I was told not to change the practice or the bargaining unit would have nothing to do with me.

Maybe I was the crazy one, but we stopped that practice if the plants had all the bells and whistles in place to assure correct cooking temperatures around the clock were being recorded.

Of course Congresswoman DeLauro really went crazy when we did this to the inspectors; one would have thought the sky was falling down.

But that is a whole ‘nother story all by itself.

Crazy encounters: #4 and #5 of a few

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