Protecting Food. Empowering Whistleblowers.
Protecting Food. Empowering Whistleblowers.
The Government Accountability Project is probing whether biotech companies exerted improper influence over Hawaii government officials while the Kauai County Council debated GMO and pesticide disclosure legislation this year. The Washington D.C.-based government watchdog group has submitted several information requests to Hawaii state and county officials asking them to disclose meetings and communications with biotech […]
Where there’s risk of animal cruelty at slaughterhouses, food safety concerns are probably not that far behind, and vice versa! USDA whistleblowers have revealed in the last two years the threats to public health caused by the agency’s poultry processing inspection plan (which would increase line speeds to 175 birds per minute), but now poultry […]
By JEFF ZALESIN For years, opponents of so-called ag-gag legislation across the country have been saying that it is unconstitutional to pass laws aimed at restricting hidden-camera reporting on factory farms. Soon, they’ll tell it to a federal judge in Utah. A coalition of journalists and animal-rights activists, led by the Animal Legal Defense Fund […]
(Washington, DC) – The Government Accountability Project (GAP) welcomes the comprehensive whistleblower protections included in the Safe Meat and Poultry Act of 2013, introduced today by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY). The bill provides gold standard whistleblower protections for corporate meat and poultry workers who report food violations enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). […]
By John Upton Let’s hope this chicken was inspected by a government worker. Who would you rather have check factory chickens for signs of illness and smears of crap — a USDA inspector or a factory employee? The U.S. Department of Agriculture has long stationed its own inspectors along factory lines at poultry plants. But […]
by Ron Nixon WASHINGTON — The Agriculture Department’s plan to change its poultry inspection procedures relied on incomplete and antiquated data, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office released on Wednesday. The new rules will allow workers at plants, rather than agency inspectors, to examine birds on processing lines for blemishes or […]
(Washington, DC) – Tammy Schrier, wife of Government Accountability Project (GAP) client and veteran USDA inspector Jim Schrier, has collected more than 150,000 petition signatures through a Change.org petition asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to stop retaliating against her husband. Jim Schrier, a USDA meat inspector for 29 years, was recently stationed at […]
by Tim Eberly One-third of a second. That’s how long a federal inspector will have to examine slaughtered chickens for contaminants and disease under new rules proposed by the federal government. The proposal would speed up production lines as much as 25 percent. It also would pull most federal inspectors off the lines and replace […]
FIC and many of our diverse coalition partners contributed to a statement released today by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) regarding anti-whistleblower Ag Gag legislation. The statement reads in part: … a broad spectrum of public interest groups today welcomed the defeat of all 11 ag-gag/anti-whistleblower bills that were […]
(Washington, DC) – On Friday, the The Kansas City Star publicized an investigative report in the case of Government Accountability Project (GAP) client Jim Schrier, a veteran federal food safety inspector who faces retaliation after blowing the whistle on violations of humane handling regulations at a USDA-regulated Tyson Foods plant in Iowa. GAP represents Schrier […]