In about three hours, as I blissfully sleep, U.S. ag-types will take to the PR circuit to advance a new program for poultry inspection.

According to Bloomberg, the U.S. would increase oversight of poultry processors’ sanitary practices and contamination controls instead of visually checking each chicken and turkey for scabs and sores under a plan that would save the industry $250 million a year.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said the proposal, to be presented today, may prevent 5,200 foodborne illnesses a year by modernizing and making the system more efficient by taking the emphasis off visual imperfections that can harm poultry sales rather than improve safety.

“It’s obviously about safer food and fewer foodborne illnesses,” Vilsack said in an interview. “It’s also about reducing the cost of production in an effective way without redundancy or compromising safety.”

The U.S. would save as much as $40 million a year within two or three years, in part through the elimination of inspection jobs, Vilsack said. Last week, the secretary announced a reorganization of his agency that would lower spending by about $150 million a year, or 1 percent of the department’s budget. The public will have 90 days to comment on the proposal.

The USDA would continue to inspect poultry carcasses at the end of the production line before they are chilled and will be on site at all times, Vilsack said. Slaughter operators have the option of requesting the U.S. continue visual inspections for blemishes, according to the proposed regulation.

Gary Mickelson, a spokesman for Tyson Foods Inc. (TSN), in an e-mail. Tyson, based in Springdale, Arkansas and the largest U.S. chicken producer by volume, participated in the pilot program testing the new inspection rules.

“This modified system reduces redundancies between company and USDA inspection efforts and gives USDA’s staff more flexibility to focus on other things that verify the effectiveness of our food safety activities,” said Mickelson, adding that Tyson has not yet seen the proposed regulation.

The pilot program with 25 poultry processors conducted over more than a decade found no increased risk of injuries to workers from the faster production line and showed the effort to be successful, said Elisabeth Hagen, undersecretary for food safety at the USDA, in an interview.

Inspectors began visually inspecting poultry for physical defects in 1906, before it was possible to detect microbial contamination that can’t be seen and poses a hazard, he said.