Food Safety: Adventures in Grading Arkansas Food Safety Poultry Inspectors Ensure Quality Foods The poultry industry is the largest sector of Arkansas agriculture, providing more than $4.9 billion in cash receipts in 2018. Arkansas nationally ranked second in broiler chicken production and fifth in turkey production. With that production comes a need for grading, inspection, and certification of poultry products. In 2019, 1.73 billion pounds of chicken meat, 776 million pounds of turkey meat, 1.34 billion pounds of rabbit meat, and 1.52 billion eggs were inspected by the Food Safety / Egg and Poultry Section of the Arkansas Department of Agriculture’s Livestock and Poultry Division. The Food Safety Section has 36 employees, graders, and inspectors that provide commodity grading, inspection, and certification of poultry, turkey, eggs, and rabbits under a Cooperative Agreement with USDA Agricultural Marketing Service and in compliance with the Arkansas Egg Marketing Act. Thirty-five of the employees are licensed by the USDA. “Every day is an adventure in grading,” said Sara Overton, an Agriculture Commodity Compliance Specialist, better known as a grader, with the Arkansas Department of Agriculture. “You have to be flexible, and spontaneous, and a person who can figure things out by themselves.” The Food Safety Section strives to protect consumers and the agricultural industry by ensuring that poultry, eggs, and rabbit products offered to the public are safe, wholesome, and properly labeled. Graders provide service at processing plants to assure food safety and food quality. Inspectors provide auditing services at retail outlets for regulatory compliance on eggs, ensuring the products are properly graded and labeled according to State and Federal guidelines. “People need to feel safe and understand that there are people looking out for them when it comes to the food they eat, I like to reassure people of that,” said Overton. Overton works as a relief grader who fills in vacancies at poultry plants. She travels between plants, like Tyson and Butterball, to ensure quality. She even inspects at Pel-Freez in Rogers, the largest processor of rabbit meat in the United States. The job for her is different every day, but she says she likes getting to see how each company makes their products. She is certified in all four licenses available in Arkansas: chicken, turkey, eggs, and rabbit.
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