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FSIS evaluating petition to deem four Salmonella strains adulterants
Story Date: 3/19/2012
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Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 3/16/12
USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has received a petition from Center for Science in the Public Interest requesting that the agency deem four strains of Salmonella as adulterants in raw meat and poultry.
“We’re assessing that and how we’d go forward if we were to adopt it,” Dan Engeljohn, assistant administrator FSIS’s Office of Policy & Program Development, told attendees here at the North American Meat Processors Association’s annual Meat Industry Management Conference.
The petition is one of FSIS’s many considerations with regard to Salmonella as it looks to help reduce illnesses associated with that pathogen in the products the agency regulates. Each year more than 500,000 illnesses are reported to have stemmed from those products, primarily from poultry.
“We really can’t make progress if we don’t focus on Salmonella … much of our policy efforts will focus on Salmonella in poultry,” Engeljohn said.
FSIS is conducting several baseline studies, including one on raw chicken parts to establish a new performance standard and on ground poultry to reset current Salmonella performance standards. Testing so far on ground poultry has shown that roughly 50 percent of samples “could have Salmonella in them,” Engeljohn said. The agency just began the chicken parts study, scheduled to span six months.
Engeljohn also said FSIS is focused on verification testing in broiler carcass sets, with the goal to complete two sets over the course of the next year, as the agency plans to verify compliance with new standards issued in July last year. The agency has nearly completed one set in most establishments.
Good news is poultry processors largely have been meeting the challenge for Salmonella.
“There’s a very good compliance meeting the new performance standards we put in place for Salmonella,” Engeljohn said. “There are only a few establishments who have failed the new performance standards.”
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