Source: Tom Johnston, MEATINGPLACE, 1/23/14 


The chicken industry’s efforts to get a handle on salmonella contamination in chicken parts are independent of those of USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and not intended to undermine impending regulatory standards, agency and industry officials told Meatingplace.

The comments came Wednesday in response to an article posted on Food Safety News  (FSN) in which consumer activist group Food and Water Watch alleges that the National Chicken Council’s (NCC) plans to coordinate an industry effort to sample chicken parts for salmonella and set independent performance standards — and FSIS’s support of the initiative — suggests the industry will be allowed "to self-regulate on pathogen levels in chicken parts" to the detrimiment of public health.

Tom Super, spokesman for NCC, reiterated to Meatingplace in an emailed statement that the industry’s effort is not an attempt to subvert impending performance standards that FSIS is developing but to make sure processors can comply with them when they are implemented. 

“We are collectively and non-competitively exploring all options to reduce contamination throughout the process in order to provide the safest product possible to our consumers. As I told FSN, this is something the industry is proactively working to address, so when a performance standard for parts is put in place by FSIS the industry can be meeting or exceeding the standard, as we currently do for whole carcasses.” 

FSIS officials also disputed Food and Water Watch’s claims. The agency has called salmonella reduction in the products it regulates its "top priority" for this year, and as part of that it will continue its plan to set performance standards for comminuted poultry and poultry parts. A spokesperson told Meatingplace those standards are on track to be completed and developed by the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30. 

The agency also will use its own testing in FSIS-regulated plants to verify standards that have already been established.

“These steps taken by the industry are entirely separate from and neither replace nor undermine FSIS' control measures,” the FSIS spokesperson told Meatingplace in an emailed statement. “Public health stands to benefit from the industry's indication that they are taking our food safety goals seriously and potentially are adding their own layers of protection.”

FSIS’s Salmonella Action Plan, announced in December, includes strengthening the agency’s sampling and enforcement strategies.

"We are in support of and would not deter an industry initiative geared towards meeting or exceeding the food safety goals laid out in the Salmonella Action Plan," the FSIS spokesperson said. 

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