Source:  Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE.COM, 5/14/10

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack announced Friday that USDA has completed new food safety standards for ground beef purchased by the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) for federal food and nutrition assistance programs, including school lunches.

The new requirements will be applicable to AMS ground beef contracts awarded on or after July 1, 2010.

The details issued Friday mirror those made available to Meatingplace in February when the intention to issue new standards was first announced.

In addition to continuing a zero tolerance for E. coli O157:H7 and salmonella, the new AMS standards will:

• tighten microbiological testing protocols
• tighten the microbiological upper specification and critical limits
• increase microbiological sampling frequency for finished products to every 15 minutes and
• institute additional rejection criteria for source trimmings used to manufacture AMS-purchased ground beef.

AMS will also consider any vendor classified by FSIS as having a long-term poor safety record as an ineligible vendor until a complete cause-and-effect analysis is completed.

NAS review

USDA also announced the National Academy of Sciences has begun its review of AMS ground beef purchase requirements. The review is focused on three major areas:

1. evaluating the scientific validity of current technical requirements and methods
2. benchmarking those processes and methods against recognized industry leading programs which supply product directly to consumers through retail sales or food service operations and
3. making recommendations to AMS on how to perform future periodic evaluations against industry recognized best practices.