The Agriculture Department is in the middle of a battle with meat and poultry processors about exactly how much blood, gore, and contamination from packing plants ought to be online.
The Agriculture Department said in a hearing Thursday that safety reports on meat and poultry processing plants might be posted online by January 1998.
"This is extremely valuable information," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a consumer advocacy group. DeWaal said that, if presented correctly, consumers could use the information to evaluate which plants are performing best.
Poultry and meat processors don't like the idea of putting the inspection reports online, saying that consumers could easily misinterpret test data. The industry also says that making detailed information public, online or by other means, could put it at a disadvantage with foreign competitors.
"We feel the department should give very serious consideration to not posting this information on the Internet," Ken May of the National Broiler Council told Reuters.
The Agriculture Department will soon begin testing meat and poultry plants for the deadly bacteria salmonella as part of an overhaul of meat inspection standards. The department is in the midst of deciding what data the reports will include.
Despite protests from the meat and poultry industry, the USDA is under mandate from Congress to make the information available electronically. "The consumers are paying for the tests," said DeWaal. "The taxpayers own the information and should have access to it."
