10/27/06 UL Reviews Pumps & Risk Based Inspections

The ethanol industry says a move by Underwriters Laboratory to suspend E85 pump part approvals is a temporary safety step that will slow - but not stop - E85 expansion. Underwriters Laboratory says it's now reviewing E85 pump parts before resuming the approval process. Renewable Fuels Association spokesman Matt Hartwig says U-L wants to ensure the parts work and work safely. HARTWIG: What UL is doing from my understanding is taking another closer look at the components of the pump. Again in Iowa, the state has gone out and looked at them. They don't feel there's any risk there. A final report and follow up meeting are the next steps in setting up risk based inspections of meat and poultry plants and products. According to Under Secretary Richard Raymond, how to implement the proposed plan both from a time and method perspective is still under consideration. RAYMOND: It won't be a 2 day meeting like the one last week. This will be part of a one day meeting so that those groups can come in and tell us what they think about the resolve report and at that time we'll also give them an update on what we have fine tuned based on our own observations of the meeting last week. As for instance, the food defense plans won't be used. We'll probably announce that we'll pilot this project in one of our fifteen districts. Hopefully by that time we'll also have had the tentative ranking of the 24 food categories reviewed by some public health persons, hope to have that done by the January meeting also. Now here's today's Washington Grange Report. (GRANGE REPORT) That's today's Northwest Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.