The non-profit Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) has issued a report titled “Risky Meat” funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts that examines 12 years of foodborne illness outbreak data and ranks meat and poultry foods on a scale from highest to lowest risk.
Each food’s risk of causing severe illness was determined by calculating the hospitalization rate from the pathogen-specific illnesses attributed to outbreaks in the food groups.
“Importantly, outbreaks linked to meat and poultry have decreased over the period studied. Since 1993, the meat and poultry industry, spurred by stricter regulatory oversight and litigation, has made changes in animal production, slaughter, and processing to reduce illnesses from Salmonella, E. coli O157:H7, and other well-known hazards,” the report stated.
“Risky Meat” was written by Sarah Klein and Caroline Smith DeWaal. Data analysis was performed by Caroline Smith DeWaal, Marcus Glassman, Cindy Roberts, and Susan Vaughn Grooters.
Industry response
“A broader examination of the total food supply could have delivered a more meaningful examination of food safety risk from our normal diets and would have shown that we have a meat and poultry supply that delivers consistently safe eating experiences,” said American Meat Institute Foundation President James Hodges in a statement. "U.S. meat and poultry companies produce 90 billion pounds of meat and poultry products a year and 99.99 percent of these are consumed safely.”
He also pointed out that seafood, poultry, and beef showed the sharpest decline in the number of reported outbreaks in the study period and that CSPI cited several other food categories that were not seeing the level of food safety progress that the U.S. meat and poultry industry has achieved in the last decade.
“We do agree with CSPI's perspective that better food attribution data is needed to understand the causes of foodborne illnesses and potential strategies for improvement,” Hodges added.
“The poultry industry takes very seriously any human illness attributed to the consumption of a poultry product. Poultry companies have invested tens of millions of dollars in technology and other scientifically validated measures to enhance the safety profile of chicken products,” said Ashley Peterson, vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at the National Chicken Council, in a statement. “Continuous inspection and testing by USDA has demonstrated the long-term success of these interventions in providing a safe, wholesome and affordable protein for consumers.
USDA response
“We applaud CSPI’s ongoing efforts to educate consumers about food safety,” said Dr. Elisabeth Hagen, USDA Under Secretary for Food Safety, in a statement. “While we have made progress in making food safer—including cutting E. coli O157-related illnesses in half, we still have work to do. As Salmonella rates continue to stagnate, we look forward to CSPI’s support, and the support of other groups committed to food safety, of our efforts to reduce this dangerous foodborne pathogen, including modernization of the poultry inspection system.”
