WASHINGTON, D.C. — It only took a week for the federal Bureau of Prisons to realize the nation’s 206,000 federal prisoners wanted pork back in their beans.
On Oct. 1, the Bureau cut all pork in the prison system’s 122 federal penitentiaries, saying a prisoner survey found the inmates didn’t like the taste of the meat. That decision didn’t sit well with U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), who fired off a letter to prisons Director Charles E. Samuels Jr.
"The pork industry is responsible for 547,800 jobs, which creates $22.3 billion in personal income and contributes $39 billion to the gross domestic product," Grassley wrote. "The United States is the world’s largest exporter of pork, and the third largest producer of pork."
It stated he found the decision to cut pork "unprecedented" and "could have consequences on the livelihoods of American citizens who work in the pork industry." Grassley is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which oversees the U.S. prison system.
Prison system spokesman Edmond Ross, who a week earlier announced the decision to eliminate pork, could not explain the reversal. "I’m not cleared to say anything, and I don’t have answers for you," he said Monday.
Ross said in September the Bureau of Prisons’ annual survey on inmates’ food preferences found the prison population did not like pork. In turn, prison chefs cut bacon, pork chops, barbecue ribs and sausage from the daily menu. Ross blamed the decision on the increasing cost of pork.
When the decision was made to cut pork, the National Pork Producers Council in Washington, D.C., representing 67,000 pork producers, pledged to investigate and had not "ruled out any options to resolve" the move.
Despite some media reports that Muslim prisoners have complained about pork on the menus, prison officials said there has been no uptick in complaints from Muslim or Jewish prisoners that may have influenced the anti-pork decision.
"I appreciate the quick decision after my letter to the Bureau to keep pork products on prison menus," Grassley said Monday. "But there are still questions about how the original determination was made and the cost of conducting the surveys. None of that’s been answered, and it ought to be."
According to a study by the website Medical Daily, which posts health and science news, the daily cost to feed a prisoner was between $20-$30 a day to meet the guidelines established by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration – or on average, $9,100 per year, per prisoner.
The Bureau of Prisons serves nearly 1,100 meals per year to each of its 206,000 prisoners. There is no estimate of how much pork producers have been charging the Bureau, but the annual federal prison budget is $7 billion and officials estimate it costs $30,000 a year per prisoner to care for them.
