How to Read the USDA Establishment Number on a Meat Label

The federal inspection legend for meat is a circle with the words U.S. INSPECTED AND PASSED BY DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE and the abbreviation EST. followed by the establishment number. The regulation that prescribes it is 9 CFR 312.2, and it also permits an abbreviated form of the same mark for small containers. Poultry carries a different legend under 9 CFR 381.96: a circle reading Inspected for Wholesomeness by U.S. Department of Agriculture with the letter P and the establishment number. Egg products use a third variant with a G number.

The mark is the plant's signature, applied under an FSIS inspector's supervision, and it may not be used by anyone who does not hold the grant of inspection it names. A package without the mark is either state-inspected (state marks look similar and carry the state's name), custom-exempt (stamped Not for Sale), or not meat at all.

An establishment number is a letter and a number. FSIS assigns a separate number for each grant of inspection a facility holds, and the letter tells you which grant.

On the package itself you will usually see only EST. and the digits inside the meat legend, or P and the digits inside the poultry legend. The M is implied for meat. Numbers are not sequential by state or region, and a low number is simply an old grant; the digits carry no information beyond identity. Glossary: establishment number, federally inspected.

Under 9 CFR 317.2(i) the establishment number must appear either within the official inspection legend or, if the plant prefers, elsewhere on the exterior of the container in a prominent and legible size with the prefix EST. It may also be placed off the exterior in a few defined cases: on the metal clip that closes a casing or bag, on the back of a paper label on a can, or on an aluminum tray inside the container, but only if a statement of its location is printed next to the legend.

Where to look, in order: the round mark on the principal display panel; the round mark on the back or side panel; a line reading EST. near the net weight or the safe-handling statement; the metal clip on a sausage or bag; the lid of a can. On a whole chicken the P number is usually inside the legend on the bag; on ground beef it is inside the legend near the safe-handling instructions. If a package of meat sold at retail has no establishment number anywhere, it was not processed under federal inspection.

FSIS publishes the Meat, Poultry and Egg Product Inspection Directory (the MPI Directory), a list of every establishment operating under a federal grant of inspection, with the plant name, street address, city, state, and phone number. It is updated weekly and posted as PDF and CSV files sorted by establishment name and by establishment number, and as a mobile app for Android and iOS. A companion file, the Establishment Demographic Data, adds each plant's size class, the species it slaughters, and its production categories, and is refreshed on the same schedule. FSIS also keeps a list of plants that surrendered their grant within the last three years, which is where a number goes when a plant closes.

Our registry is built from those two files. Every federally inspected establishment with a slaughter activity in the 50 states and the District of Columbia is listed at /processors, with a page for each state at /processors/[state] and a page for each plant. Type a number into the finder at /find to jump straight to the plant, or browse by state and species. The data vintage is printed on every registry page; the current pull is dated September 1, 2026 and covers 1,495 slaughter establishments.

State-inspected plants carry a state mark and a state number, and are listed by the state agency rather than FSIS. See state meat inspection programs for the 30 states that run one and /states for each state's rules.

It tells you the plant. The name, the city, the state, and, through the demographic file, whether the plant slaughters or only processes, which species it handles, and its size class (FSIS sorts plants into large, small, and very small by employee count). A plant listed as processing only did not kill the animal; it bought carcasses or boxed primals from a slaughter plant somewhere else.

It does not tell you the farm. A slaughter plant buys cattle from feedlots, sale barns, and direct from ranches, and the number is the same for all of them. It does not tell you where the animal was born, which is why the Product of USA claim exists as a separate, voluntary statement. It does not tell you how the animal was fed or raised. And for ground beef made at a grinding plant, it identifies the grinder, not the one or several slaughter plants that supplied the trim; FSIS traces those through the grinder's source records when it needs to.

It is the last link in the chain, not the first. Combined with a farm you can name, it closes the chain completely. On its own it locates the meat within a few hundred miles at most.

Three things make the establishment number more reliable than any other statement on the package.

First, it is mandatory. Product of USA, grass-fed, and every welfare logo are voluntary claims a packer chooses to make. The legend is required by 9 CFR 317.2 on every federally inspected package, and it is applied under the supervision of an inspector who is in the plant.

Second, it is the unit FSIS uses for enforcement. When FSIS issues a recall or public health alert, the notice identifies the product by the establishment number inside the USDA mark, along with lot codes and dates. The December 2025 ground beef recall for E. coli O26, for example, told consumers to look for EST 2083 on the packaging; a May 2025 alert cited EST. 4027 inside the mark. If you can read the number, you can check every recall against your freezer in a minute.

Third, it anchors the origin rule. Since January 1, 2026, a plant using the Product of USA claim must keep records proving birth, raising, slaughter, and processing in the United States and produce them for the inspector at that establishment. The claim lives at the plant, so verification does too.

The formats below are illustrative. The numbers are chosen to show the pattern, not to identify particular companies; look any real number up before drawing a conclusion.

Related: USDA vs. state vs. custom-exempt inspection, custom-exempt slaughter explained, and custom-exempt in the glossary.

State-inspected meat carries a state legend rather than the federal one, with the state's name and a state establishment number. The Wholesome Meat Act of 1967 requires state programs to be at least equal to federal inspection, and 30 states run one in 2026. State-inspected product may be sold only within the state unless the plant is in the Cooperative Interstate Shipment program, in which case it carries a federal-style mark with the state abbreviation; see cooperative interstate shipment.

Imported meat is inspected on arrival at an I-numbered import establishment. If it is then cut or repackaged at a domestic plant, the package carries that domestic plant's M or P number, and nothing on the legend reveals the foreign origin. The foreign plant's own establishment number appears only on the shipping cartons. That is the gap the 2026 Product of USA rule addresses only for packers who choose to make the claim; see our import tracker.

Custom-exempt meat carries no establishment number at all, because the plant holds no grant of inspection. Packages are marked Not for Sale under 9 CFR 316.16 and belong to the person who owned the animal. Custom plants are reviewed periodically by FSIS or the state, generally once a year, rather than inspected daily.