USDA, NSF become rivals in processing equipment certification

Three and a half years after the Agriculture Department's Food Safety and Inspection Service stopped requiring prior approval of equipment used in federally inspected meat and poultry packing and processing plants, USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service is gearing up for a certification plan in direct competition with one conducted by NSF International, the nonprofit National Sanitation Foundation. Both the AMS and the NSF programs are voluntary. FSIS oversight instead now focuses on Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points systems that leave it up to the plants to determine how their products may be at risk for contamination and how best to cope with problems and document the effectiveness of safeguards.

FSIS has long let it be known it no longer favors a "command and control" system to ensure food safety in which the government dictates or approves step-by-step measures and approvals. Now, however, the AMS, responding to provisions in its 2001 appropriations (Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2001, Pub. L. No. 106-387, Section 729) is receiving applications for voluntary certification of equipment and utensils used to process livestock and poultry products.

An AMS spokesperson said the agency has performed "official evaluation reviews" requested by five companies and covering 14 different pieces of equipment. One piece of equipment was accepted under the NSF/3-A standard, she said. AMS on Jan. 4 announced that its user-fee-funded program was open to provide service to manufacturers. Submitted equipment that meets standards developed by the NSF/3-A Joint Committee on Food Processing Equipment would be eligible for certification and could carry the marketing claim of "United States Department of Agriculture Accepted Equipment," the AMS announcement said.

Meanwhile, NSF International had announced its own program of voluntary certification, using ANSI/NSF/3-A Standard 14159-1-2000 covering materials, design, and construction requirements for meat and poultry processing equipment.

NSF International claims to certify and test more than 130,000 products from 82 countries through some 18 food, water, air, and environmental product programs.

According to John Armbruster, development manager of NSF's food equipment program, its meat and poultry processing equipment program is now in its fourth month with four companies certified and seven in process. Overall, counting its other programs, the organization's World Wide Web site shows a total of 1,848 manufacturers as having food equipment certification through those other programs.

"How do we view the USDA program?" Armbruster asked rhetorically in an April 2 interview with BNA. "As competition."

Equipment purchasers value certification because they want to know that equipment is easier to clean, quicker to clean, and able to meet FSIS requirements in terms of HACCP, materials, and design and construction, Armbruster noted.

The standards used by AMS and NSF are not identical, nor are they identical to the standards that had been used by FSIS, Armbruster said. NSF is also attempting to supplant a program dropped by USDA in 1998 that listed approved proprietary substances and nonfood compounds that could be used in meat and poultry processing. The list covered such products as antifoaming agents, marking agents, and materials not intended for direct contact with food such as maintenance and cleaning chemicals, lubricants, and water treatment chemicals.

USDA no longer maintains the list and no longer approves the substances and compounds. But NSF now publishes its own list called the NSF White Book. A hard copy of the White Book will be published this month, and the list will be updated by August and republished after that, according to NSF official Stanley Hazan.

The list is currently maintained online at www.nsf.org/usda but includes many companies no longer doing business. Currently it lists both products previously listed by USDA and those "registered" by NSF using its own program, which, according to the organization, uses essentially the same standards, categories, and designations as the defunct USDA program. By contrast, with the meat and poultry processing equipment program just launched by AMS, AMS will not deem products certified by NSF as acceptable.

Source: Food Safety Report News Alert