Comment from David Thornton

To add an additional comment to my previous comment - this is in response to another person's comment about farmers who may not be large enough to attract interest by a federally inspected establishment. I am on a patrol assignment. We have about 33 facilities that we inspect, and each inspector covers 3 - 5 establishments. In addition, there is an egg products processing facility and a small slaughter facility in our area. Some of these facilities have less than 10 employees. In fact, there are some that have only 1 - 3 employees in the meat processing areas. It is totally untrue that a facility is too small to be under federal inspection. If all of the establishments in our area with less than 25 employees were to come under state, rather than federal inspection, there would be about 10 federal FSIS employees in our area that would be out of a job. Since pay and benefits don't transfer between state and federal employees, becoming a state employee wouldn't be an option. I am just pointing out our area. How many large municipalities such as here have multiple inspectors covering several small plants? You are conceivably talking a large number of federal employees displaced out of jobs, and/or a large expense to the federal government in relocating those inspectors willing to move. I am totally against enacting this proposed rule!