To fulfill the requirements of the across-the-board budget cuts required by the sequester, USDA has said it will be required to begin furloughing federal meat inspectors in July. Agriculture Undersecretary for Food Safety Elisabeth Hagen told the House Agriculture Appropriations Subcommittee yesterday that inspectors will be furloughed in July on the same day in every part of the country, and each inspector will be furloughed for a total of 11 days before September 20.
Undersecretary Hagen said the Food Safety and Inspection Service decided to furlough all employees at once to be as fair to the industry as possible. If the agency staggered the furloughs, and a solution is found after the furloughs had started, the industry in one part of the country would undergo an economic burden while the others would not, she told the subcommittee.
Hagen said that all 9,212 FSIS employees will be furloughed, including 8,136 inspectors and other personnel such as lab technicians that the agency considers “front line” employees.
The total amount of the FSIS budget cut is likely to be $52.8 million or 5 percent of the agency’s annual budget, Hagen said. However, she pointed out that that figure is not certain because Congress has not yet passed the continuing resolution to fund the government for the remaining of the fiscal year.
Some members of the subcommittee repeatedly expressed frustration that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack had not found some way to avoid furloughing the inspections. “FSIS’s buget has increased by nearly $75 million since 2008, to $1.004 billion,” said the subcommittee charmain Robert Aderholt (R-AL). “While I realize that this is a salary-intensive agency, I hope that there is a reasonable and responsible way to meet the challenges of sequestration while minimizing the impact on frontline inspectors and industry alike.” But Hagen maintained that there is no way that the agency can avoid the furloughs and comply with the sequester law, saying that USDA lawyers have examined the meat inspection and sequester statutes and found no alternative to the planned furloughs.
