The US Department of Agriculture’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) recently published an audit report relevant to AWI’s efforts to improve the accuracy of meat label claims. The report, Controls Over Meat, Poultry, and Egg Product Labels, investigated the label approval program of the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
In the audit, the OIG found that 9 of 60 label approval packages were either incomplete, inaccurate, or unsupported. AWI suspects the problem is far worse, however, given that the OIG only assessed approved labels. AWI has found that many animal-raising claims on meat products may never have been approved by the FSIS. In Label Confusion 2.0, AWI reported that the FSIS was unable to locate documents for 8 of 19 (42%) product labels investigated.