Source: Rita Jane Gabbett, MEATINGPLACE, 11/8/16



USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service unveiled its 2017-2022 five-year plan that includes, among many others, goals to strengthen pathogen sampling programs and ensure establishments are meeting pathogen reduction performance standards.
In a 67-page report, the agency laid out how it plans to approach three overarching goals: 1) prevent foodborne illness and protect public health; 2) modernize inspection systems, policies, and the use of scientific approaches and 3) achieve operational excellence. Each goal is supported by a number of objectives and measurements.

More sampling
There are some combinations of establishments, hazards, and products that the agency does not currently sample or test. For example, FSIS maintains a number of exclusions or exceptions in a variety of sampling programs for different regulatory and policy reasons.

In the five-year plan, FSIS outlined ways it will expand the breadth, depth, and frequency of its sampling to better address gaps in testing for pathogens and chemical residues in FSIS-regulated products.

Approaches include unifying testing so that FSIS only collects one sample for each product and tests it for multiple microbiological hazards or chemical residues, and leveraging new technology to increase precision, gain efficiencies, and better identify and define hazards and problems.

Among many actions, the agency said it plans to increase the percentage of products from FSIS-regulated establishments sampled for microbial or chemical hazards.

FSIS will also increase the percentage of establishments at which it collects samples to close identified sampling gaps, reduce exceptions to what it samples and tests, and gather knowledge on the relative risk of contamination of regulated products.

“This approach will allow for improved allocation of resources while closing sampling gaps and will maximize the public health benefit through prioritizing testing by degree of hazard,” the plan stated.

FSIS will use both routine and non-routine sampling to influence the behavior of establishments to decrease the presence of hazards in food, and will continue to use sampling data to make determinations on tightening or expanding current pathogen reduction performance standards.

In addition, FSIS will continue to collect sampling data to develop raw pork standards and will continue to explore possible standards and guidance for other chicken parts (e.g. giblets, necks, and half and quarter carcasses), ground beef, and other beef products to further reduce Salmonella and Campylobacter illnesses.

Measuring pathogen reduction
FSIS anticipates that establishing the standards, tracking, posting how each establishment is performing relative to the standards, and targeting inspection activities will reduce the occurrence of pathogens in and on poultry products.

Targeted inspection activities would include Public Health Risk Evaluations (PHREs), Food Safety Assessments (FSAs), and follow-up sampling to assess whether an establishment maintains sufficient process control.

The plan also calls for FSIS to assess the available data annually and consider developing more stringent pathogen performance standards.

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