Closing of 259 USDA offices raises safety concerns

In this photo taken in July 2009, a tech­ni­cian dumps seafood byprod­ucts into a hydrol­y­sis machine at the Fish­ery Indus­trial Tech­nol­ogy Cen­ter in Kodiak, Alaska. The U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture will close 259 domes­tic offices, labs and other facil­i­ties as part of an effort to save $150 mil­lion per year, U.S. Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack announced Mon­day. (Asso­ci­ated Press File | Uni­ver­sity of Alaska Fair­banks)

MICHAEL J. CRUMB

Asso­ci­ated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa — The U.S. Agri­cul­ture Depart­ment announced Mon­day it will close nearly 260 offices nation­wide, a move that won praise for cut­ting costs but raised con­cerns about the pos­si­ble effect on food safety.

Agri­cul­ture Sec­re­tary Tom Vil­sack said the goal was to save $150 mil­lion a year in the agency’s $145 bil­lion bud­get. About $90 mil­lion had already been saved by reduc­ing travel and sup­plies, and the clo­sures were expected to save another $60 mil­lion, he said.

The plan calls for 259 offices, labs and other facil­i­ties to be closed, affect­ing the USDA head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton and oper­a­tions in 46 states. Seven for­eign offices also will be shut.

Some of the clo­sures had been pre­vi­ously announced. The USDA said last year it would shut down 10 agri­cul­tural research sta­tions, includ­ing the only one in Alaska, where sci­en­tists were seek­ing ways to use the vast waste gen­er­ated by the largest wild fish­ery in the nation to make every­thing from gel caps for pills to fish meal for live­stock feed.

Other parts of the announce­ment were a sur­prise. Andrew Lorenz, deputy dis­trict man­ager for the Food Safety and Inspec­tion Ser­vice in Min­neapo­lis, learned his office would be closed, along with those in Madi­son, Wis., and Lawrence, Kan.

“They wiped out the entire Mid­west,” said Lorenz, whose office han­dles all fed­eral inspec­tions of meat, poul­try and egg prod­ucts in Min­nesota, Mon­tana, the Dako­tas and Wyoming.

FSIS offices in Chicago and Des Moines will remain open. It was not imme­di­ately clear whether work from the other offices would be shifted to them.

Lorenz said about 16 peo­ple work in his office, and he expected 12 to 14 of their jobs to be elim­i­nated. A USDA spokes­woman said employ­ees would be given the oppor­tu­nity to trans­fer to other offices when­ever possible.

Elis­a­beth Hagen, under­sec­re­tary for food safety, said the clo­sures would affect man­age­ment and sup­port staff as FSIS offices are con­sol­i­dated from 15 to 10, but that there wouldn’t be a reduc­tion in inspec­tors or inspec­tion work.

“There will be no reduc­tion in inspec­tion pres­ence at slaugh­ter and pro­cess­ing facil­i­ties and no risk for con­sumers,” Hagen said.

“Not only do we have a statu­tory oblig­a­tion to be in every facil­ity, we have an unwa­ver­ing com­mit­ment to food safety,” she added. “We will still be on the job, in every facil­ity, every day.”

Vil­sack said he didn’t antic­i­pate wide­spread lay­offs, in part because 7,000 USDA employ­ees took early retire­ments over the past year. He said the agency is try­ing to do more with less in light of fed­eral cut­backs, and many of the offices to be closed had few employ­ees or were near other offices.

“Our work­load is at record highs, we have less money and fewer peo­ple and work to do and we tried to address how do you do that with­out inter­rupt­ing ser­vice,” Vil­sack said in a phone call from Hon­olulu, where he was speak­ing to the Amer­i­can Farm Bureau Federation.

The USDA man­ages a wide array of pro­grams, from emer­gency aid for farm­ers to grants for rural devel­op­ment and food assis­tance pro­grams for the poor. Along with the Agri­cul­tural Research and Food Safety and Inspec­tion ser­vices, six other depart­ments will be affected by clo­sures, includ­ing the Farm Ser­vice Agency and Rural Development.

Kevin Ross, 31, a sixth-generation farmer in Iowa, expressed con­cern about how ser­vices would be affected. Farm­ers could drop out of pro­grams if they have to travel long dis­tances, he said.

“Access to agen­cies is a big deal, espe­cially in rural areas,” said Ross, who grows 400 acres of corn on his farm near Min­den. “It’s easy to say it looks like great cost sav­ings, but I hope they are care­ful and strate­gic in their decisions.”

Vil­sack said pub­lic hear­ings will be held in coun­ties where Farm Ser­vice Agency offices are to be closed. That depart­ment han­dles dis­as­ter assis­tance, farm loans and crop sub­si­dies, among other pro­grams. The USDA plans to shut 131 FSA offices in 32 states, with largest num­ber of clo­sures in Arkansas, Ten­nessee and Texas.

Bruce Bab­cock, a farm econ­o­mist at Iowa State Uni­ver­sity and direc­tor of the school’s Cen­ter for Agri­cul­tural and Rural Devel­op­ment, said con­sol­i­da­tion was a long time com­ing, given that advances in tech­nol­ogy made it pos­si­ble to file appli­ca­tions and do other tasks over the phone or online. He said he’s more con­cerned about the USDA’s abil­ity to main­tain pro­grams that deal with dis­ease prevention.

“The capa­bil­ity to col­lect data and do the behind the scenes activ­i­ties that really help U.S. agri­cul­ture stay safe, that should be con­cern­ing,” Bab­cock said.

Colin Woodall, a spokesman for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Asso­ci­a­tion, which rep­re­sents more than 147,000 ranch­ers nation­wide, applauded the USDA for try­ing to save tax­pay­ers’ money in tight eco­nomic times but also expressed con­cern about food safety.

“We can’t say this is all great news because some offices will be closed,” he said. “We have to make sure we have the process in place to keep food safe.”

Vil­sack said the clo­sures and other cost-cutting mea­sures will allow the agency to keep invest­ing in pro­grams that make agri­cul­ture more pro­duc­tive, includ­ing main­tain­ing credit to farm­ers, pro­vid­ing aid to begin­ning farm­ers and sci­en­tific research.

“Over the long haul, we believe farm­ers and ranch­ers across the coun­try will be bet­ter served by the choices we made,” he said.

But that was of lit­tle con­so­la­tion to Cal­i­for­nia cot­ton grow­ers mourn­ing the loss of the 80-year-old agri­cul­ture research sta­tion at Shafter, which solved many of the industry’s pest and fun­gus issues.

Cal­cot, a grow­ers’ co-op that sells more than a mil­lion bales annu­ally, had lob­bied offi­cials to keep the cen­ter, which lately has been work­ing to address fusar­ium wilt, a soil-dwelling fun­gus that attacks cot­ton plants.

“This is going to be to the detri­ment of the U.S. cot­ton indus­try and ulti­mately the world because so much research there has ben­e­fited grow­ers every­where,” Cal­cot spokesman Mark Bagby said.

Posted by AP News on Jan 11 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.