A troubled new computer system used by inspectors at the nation’s 6,500 meatpacking and processing plants shut down for two days this month, putting at risk millions of pounds of beef, poultry, pork and lamb that had left the plants before workers could collect samples to check for E. coli bacteria and other contaminants.   http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/us/computer-system-failed-at-meatpacking-plants-but-shipping-continued.html?pagewanted=2&ref=us  Agriculture Department officials, who acknowledge that the system failed nationwide on Aug. 8, played down the threat to public safety and insisted that the breakdown of the $20 million computer system had not compromised the nation’s meat supply.

The shutdown of the system is only the latest in a series of computer troubles affecting some 3,000 federal meat inspectors who are using the new technology. Inspectors say the nationwide failure of the computer system early this month — along with other recent breakdowns — undermine the department’s assertions that the new technology has improved the safety of the nation’s meat.  “They’ve poured millions of dollars into this thing, and it still doesn’t work,” said Stan Painter, a federal inspector who leads the inspectors’ union.

A report in March by the Agriculture Department’s inspector general found that glitches with the new computer system led to problems with meat sampling at 18 plants last year. At one of the plants, auditors found that inspectors had not properly sampled some 50 million pounds of ground beef for E. coli over a period of five months. At another plant, which the report identified as among the 10 largest slaughterhouses in the United States, auditors found that computer failures had caused inspectors to miss sampling another 50 million pounds of beef products.

The report did not say whether any tainted meat had reached consumers, but inspectors say it is only a matter of time.

Inspectors say daily snags with the computer systems are as frustrating and potentially dangerous as the larger failures. The system frequently crashes when inspectors try to log into it, they say, which does not always allow them to save information once they have typed it in. They also say they have to reboot the system regularly after doing routine tasks.

“It works the way it’s supposed to, allowing us to keep track of what’s happening inside the plants,” said Dr. Douglas L. Fulnechek, a supervisory veterinary medical officer with the inspection service.