Source:  Amber Gibson, MEATINGPLACE, 6/16/11

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is still working on tests for non-O157 E. coli STECs, according to Betsy Booren, the director of scientific affairs for the American Meat Institute Foundation.

“My understanding is it’s a work in progress,” Booren said. “They [FSIS] have had to create technology, where they thought they could use existing technology.”

A Government Accounting Office report from earlier this year said the USDA had completed methodology testing for all six of the targeted non-O157 STECs. However, Booren said that after meeting with USDA officials in the past three weeks, she learned that the agency has run into problems with two serotypes because the testing technologies were not working.

An FSIS spokesperson confirmed to Meatingplace that the agency ran into problems with serotypes O111 and O145. “However, we have developed a workaround to identify these two serotypes (along with the 4 other non-O157 STEC) in a timely fashion using our testing methodology, which we validated last October.”
“As we have continued to improve, we now have begun validation of the next version of the method," he continued. "The improvements include new enrichment media, new primers and probes, a new instrument, and in all likelihood a new selective plating media.”

Booren’s comments were made during a media conference call June 15 in the wake of Europe’s E. coli outbreak.

Booren and James Hodges, president of the AMI Foundation, made the case that specific testing for non-O157 STECs would be superfluous.

“Our research shows that existing strategies that we use today in our plants are effective against non-O157 if properly implemented,” said Hodges, noting AMI’s focus has and always will be on implementing control strategies that will be effective against not only specific but all pathogens.

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