America's chicken inspectors may be sleeping a little sounder tonight, and they can thank the U.S. Senate.
The crime bill passed by the Senate Thursday night would reinstate the federal death penalty for certain violent crimes: assassinating the president, hijacking an airliner - and murdering a government poultry inspector.Nor are the government's horse inspectors going unprotected. Murdering one would be a hanging offense, too. (Just finding one would be a trick; there are fewer than two dozen nationwide.)
The new death penalty provisions came as something of a surprise at the U.S. Department of Agriculture, where officials weren't aware of any recent murder sprees against the nation's 7,300 meat and poultry inspectors.
"I can assure you that attacks on federal meat inspectors are few and far between," said Jim Greene, a spokesman for USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
So why are meat, poultry, egg and horse inspectors included among the new death penalty provisions?
"That's what everyone asks," laughed David Lavallee, a spokesman for the Senate Judiciary Committee. And the reason: Laws against murdering government inspectors have been on the books for decades - dating from a time when there were a lot of horses, horse traders and horse thieves. So the idea is old, not new.
What is new are procedural safeguards, such as guaranteeing standards of counsel, that would allow those old laws to conform to a 1976 Supreme Court ruling. The effect would reinstate the death penalty for a series of federal crimes, such as assassinating the president or murdering a poultry inspector.