A significant effort is under way in Congress to allow meat producers to ship their products across state lines when certified by state, but not federal, inspectors.

Under current law, meat that is only inspected by a state-certified processing plant cannot be shipped interstate, even though the state standards are required to be equal to or better than federal standards. Legislation sponsored by Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, would change that law, however, to place the state-certified plants on par with federal plants.

The ban against interstate shipments from state-certified plants does not apply to most other agricultural products, including milk, fruit, vegetables and fish. Foreign meat also does not have to be federally inspected, even though many inspection programs in other countries are not as stringent.

"This ban doesn't make sense, and it hurts Utah's ranchers and small business owners, and there's no reason for it," Hatch said in a statement.

Critics of the change, including consumer groups and labor unions, warn that relying on state inspections could lead to more tainted or spoiled meat being sold. There would also be a more limited ability for massive recalls, since states do not have an ability to issue recalls.

"Any notion that state inspection systems are equal to the federal system is hogwash," said Michael Wilson, United Food and Commerical Workers Union International Vice President and Director of Legislative and Political Action in a statement. "Any effort to devolve federal oversight of meat and poultry plants to states is a threat to consumer safety and will further subject food workers to unsanitary work conditions."

But Richard Lohmeyer, manager of Utah's Meat and Poultry Inspection Program, said that the concerns about safety is not accurate. All of the tainted meat that has been recalled — including a massive recall of hamburgers currently in effect on the East Coast — has been produced in federal plants.

"Not one of the 27 states that do inspections have ever had a recall," he said. "Those recalls are coming from federal plants, where they have eight to 10 inspectors on site."

He also said that the change would be mostly to help producers sell their products regionally, such as a Cache Valley plant that would like to distribute into southern Idaho. Most of the plants are small, which is what attracts many local ranchers, and do not have the money to sell nationally or internationally.

"These small plants don't have thousands of dollars to ship around the globe," Lohmeyer said. "They just want to put it on a truck and send it to Idaho or Arizona."

There are multiple proposals of varying complexity in the U.S. Senate to change the law, including Hatch's. The U.S. House has already approved changing the law as part of the massive farm bill.

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E-mail: jloftin@desnews.com