Ms. Jolene Heikens

Triple T Country Meats, Wellsburg, IA

American Association of Meat Processors

Iowa Meat Processors Association & 18 other state meat associations



Public Hearing on S.1988, New Markets for State-Inspected Meat Act

April 6, 2000 Room 328 Russell Senate Office Building



The Honorable Richard Lugar, Chairman & Members, Senate Agriculture Committee

328A Russell Senate Office Building, 1st & C Streets NE Washington, DC 20510



My name is Jolene Heikens. My husband Greg and I own and operate Triple T Country Meats, Wellsburg, IA. My business is a small state-inspected meat processing plant in Iowa.



I am here to today to voice my support for S.1988, the New Markets for State-Inspected Meat Act, and tell you why this proposed law should be passed. I ask that this legislation be marked up, passed by the Senate and House, and signed into law. I am speaking for myself, the Iowa Association of Meat Processors, and the American Association of Meat Processors.



Also supporting this legislation are state meat processors associations from the following states: Indiana, California, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Montana, New York, North Carolina, Oklahoma-Texas, South Carolina, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Wyoming, Louisiana, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and the National Country Ham Association. A large percentage of plants that belong to AAMP are state-inspected. Virtually all the plants in the Iowa State Association and the 18 other state associations mentioned are state-inspected plants.



Let me tell you a little about my plant. My plant is located in Wellsburg, IA , a small town in East-Central Iowa. My business is a small, state-inspected slaughtering and processing plant. Because we are trying to grow, we are building a new plant - and at this point, we've decided it's probably going to be a federal plant. We don't really want to go federal, and we can't see any reason to go federal. But at this point, there doesn't seem to be any other way.



By the way, in trying to have a federal plant, we're running up against a stone wall. I've called Des Moines, the USDA district office, on numerous occasions, to find out about how to apply to be a federal plant. But nobody calls us back. We've asked them to come down and look at our plant. So far, there's been no response.





Page 2...Jolene Heikens/AAMP/IMPA Testimony on S.1988





We support interstate shipment for state-inspected plants, and do not believe very small plants should have to change to federal inspection in order to ship out of state. The main difference that I can see between inspection at the state level and inspection at the federal level is communication. It is much easier to communicate with inspectors at the state level than it is with inspectors at the federal level.



Let me give you a few examples. Hours of inspection can be a tremendous problem in federal plants. At times, USDA inspectors are not available. They dictate when you can slaughter and process, based on the availability of their people. Federal inspectors are unionized, and so the rules and the contract they operate under can also have an effect on inspection.



In fact, products in state-inspected plants tend to be better inspected than those in federal plants. Before opening our own business, we were involved in big plants under federal inspection. The truth is that we rarely saw inspectors in those plants. In our small business, there is constant inspection, much more so than in those federal plants. When opponents of interstate shipment say that state plants don't have to follow all the rules, directives, that's not true. State plants have to follow rules that USDA has dropped, including blueprint and label approval.



As private businesses, we should be market-driven. We should be able to operate our plants in a way that helps our businesses advance. Meat inspection should have to follow our schedules, so that we can produce our products when we need to. We should be able to operate on a schedule that suits our needs. But that's not the way it works right now, especially in the federal system. Plants and businesses are forced to follow inspection schedules that are set by inspectors. We are forced to follow rules that come down from a labor union that represents federal inspectors that have nothing to do with our marketing or production efforts.



That's why in many ways, state inspection is preferable to federal inspection. That's why it's important for state inspection to be able to continue, and for plants to continue operating under state inspection. The only way to guarantee that will happen is to strengthen state inspection programs and state-inspected plants. Interstate shipment of state-inspected products will do that.

Thank you for inviting me, the American Association of Meat Processors (AAMP), the Illinois Association of Meat Processors and 18 other state meat processor associations to offer testimony in favor of the New Markets State-Inspected Meat Act of 1999. We urge the Committee to approve the legislation and mark it up for passage by the full Senate.





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