Just before the new year, U.S. Agriculture secretary Sonny Perdue released a list of accomplishments made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) in 2018. A couple of those achievements related to food safety agencies are as follows:

• Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) played a vital role to ensure the free flow of agricultural trade by keeping U.S. agricultural industries free from pests and diseases. An example of this critical work is APHIS’ recent efforts to prevent African Swine Fever from entering the United States through a series of interlocking safeguards that includes working with producers, states and industry to ensure they are following biosecurity recommendations, restricting pork and pork imports from affected countries, and working with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to train inspection dogs and increase screening vigilance for passengers and products arriving from affected countries.
• Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) inspected more than 160 million head of livestock and 9.47 billion poultry carcasses. FSIS Inspectors also conducted 6.9 million food safety and food defense procedures across 6,500 regulated establishments to ensure meat, poultry, and processed egg products were safe and wholesome.

The accomplishments, according to a USDA press release, were made partly due to enacting President Donald Trump’s regulatory reform goals. You can see all of the agency’s 2018 accomplishments at USDA.gov.

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