Last week Meatingplace posted a story about an Inspector General’s Office report criticizing FSIS and its Public Health Information System (PHIS).

The comments that followed were 100 percent anti-FSIS and its leadership, blaming everything except global warming on them.

PHIS lends itself to criticism with its delays in completion dates, cost overruns and inadequacy to fill the widely publicized need for a more proactive computer system to protect our health.

But there is much more to the story than most understand.

As I was driving across America in July of 2005 with a vehicle loaded with shirts, ties and suits to become the Undersecretary for Food Safety at the USDA, I received a phone call.

“Doctor, we have a problem.”

I already knew that meant, “You have a problem.”

Seems the Food and Water Watch folks had issued a Freedom of Information Act request for all the FSIS inspector-generated reports for beef slaughter facilities that showed a breech in the removal of Specified Risk Materials (tissue that may carry the mad cow prions).

The computers were having a hard time producing the reports for multiple reasons.

One example of the problem is that our inspectors had spelled “tongue” multiple ways. It took a hand search to find the reports.

I have always felt the only thing worse than not having the information you need is having it and not knowing how to find it. That is where FSIS was at in 2005.

Fast forward to 2008.

We asked for and received a very large increase in budgeted dollars to open up beef plants and to expand shifts in others as Asia reopened to U.S. beef imports following the mad cow incident.

The budgeted dollars were immediately available, but the new workers were not so we had free dollars for a few months.

In D.C. that means use it or lose it.

We sought and received permission from Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, Chair of the Ag Appropriations Committee, to use those dollars to build a new computer system that would, in theory, enhance and protect public health.

But those dollars were for a very short time period and we knew we did not have the expertise in house nor the time to do what needed to be done to build the Public Health Information System.

So we farmed it out to an independent contractor that was highly regarded in this line of work.

It was about this time that my term was done, and I do not know what has gone wrong or failed, but I do know it was not FSIS staff nor was it FSIS political appointees that created the snafu.

Yes, I approved the subcontracting of the work to be done and I can be held accountable for that, but it was the right thing to do, all things considered. I would have been equally criticized had I told staff to do the work themselves.

By the way, the Office of the Inspector General is not your friend in D.C.

They have a job to do and they do it very well, sometimes at your expense.

The Public Health Information System

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