While you’re scarfing down wings and that beverage Americans call beer during the Super Bowl, be content to know that the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has framed new rules with an aim to lessen salmonella and campylobacter in ground chicken and turkey products. This is important because poultry parts, such as breasts and wings, compose 80% of chicken available for purchase in the United States. Instead of the current 25 percent contamination rate, processes will have to limit campylobacter and salmonella to less than 15 percent of products.
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Under the agency’s new standards, the amount of salmonella allowed in ground chicken and ground turkey go down. After companies correctly implement this new standard, the USDA believes the country will see the prevention of about 50,000 illnesses on average each year.
Once facilities have completed testing under the new standards, FSIS plans to post information online about facilities that meet or fail the standards.
“We have made strides in modernizing every aspect of food safety inspection, from company record keeping, to labeling requirements, to the way we perform testing in our labs”, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a news release. Poultry companies are looking for way to reduce contamination and get tougher on pathogens, temperature controls and processing, according to Ashley Peterson, senior vice president for scientific and regulatory affairs at the National Chicken Council.
“This approach to poultry inspection is based on science, supported by strong data, and will truly improve public health”, said USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety Al Almanza.
“Salmonella and Campylobacter are known disease-causing bacteria, and the new rule guarantees they will continue to be present in processed chicken and turkey products”, Slaughter said. Because FSIS has found the prevalence for Campylobacter in ground turkey to be already low, the reduction for this product is estimated to be 19 percent.
The standards, first proposed by the USDA in January 2015, followed a lengthy outbreak of salmonella illnesses linked to California-based Foster Farms that sickened more than 630 people between March 2013 and July 2014. “The key here is probably to focus on those few types that are causing illness, and get serious about trying to eliminate those”, he says.
“These new standards are a welcome step that will better protect the public from unsafe foodborne illness”, the coalition said.
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There are at least 360,000 illnesses every year attributed to regulated products. “These standards will help to address an antiquated testing protocol and shine a light on companies that need to clean up their act”. She said “when the performance standards for chicken parts are put in place by FSIS, we will be meeting or exceeding the standards, as we do for whole carcasses”. Since then, the FSIS has learned that Salmonella levels increase as chicken is separated into parts.
