§679a Safe Meat and Poultry Inspection Panel

Summary

Creates a permanent advisory group in the Department of Agriculture called the Safe Meat and Poultry Inspection Panel. The panel must review and evaluate inspection procedures, worker rules and relations for federal employees in inspected plants, informal and formal proposals to change inspection methods, and any other matters the Secretary sends it. The panel must send reports with recommendations to the Secretary, publish each report in the Federal Register, and meet the time limits for formal comments when the report is about a formal regulatory change. The Secretary must publish a response in the Federal Register within 90 days after a panel report is published. The panel has seven members, at least five from food, meat, or poultry science, appointed to staggered terms not longer than three years from nominees given by the National Institutes of Health and the Federation of American Societies of Food Animal Science. For the initial panel each group must give six nominees; for vacancies each must give two. Nominees need public health experience and scientific expertise in food, meat, poultry, or veterinary science. Members get travel pay at the same rate allowed under section 5703 of title 5. The Secretary must make conflict-of-interest rules. Chapter 10 of title 5 and title XVIII of the Food and Agriculture Act of 1977 do not apply to the panel. The Secretary must use funds available for this chapter and the Poultry Products Inspection Act (21 U.S.C. 451 et seq.) to pay for the panel.