Twelve years in the poultry business, including many days slaughtering and processing the meat you eat, was a great incentive to claw my way up the educational ladder. It is also a great incentive for me to urge you to resist the USDA's proposal to privatize the inspector duties at meat processing (that's killing and packaging, in real speak) plants. As it is, the assembly lines now run so quickly it's a wonder the USDA inspectors catch and reject as many of the abnormalities that they do. And remember, they are now impartial, in that their pay isn't tied to plant production. Or approval of the plant or industry owners. Even with impartial government inspectors, problems occur. And they can be fatal, or cruel.
No one proposes that the nation ditch our mine safety inspectors, for instance, and let private industry hire their own. People's lives are at stake. Don't count on the meat industry to "police their own." It isn't structured to do that very well.