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FSIS Initiative to Combat Salmonella

By Pritzker | Ruohonen

The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has recently undergone significant changes in testing and policy to reduce the threat of foodborne illnesses caused by Salmonella. The CDC reported in 2006 that Salmonella was responsible for 38.6% of human foodborne illnesses, the most common among any pathogens. 2006 was also when FSIS introduced a new initiative to combat the presence of Salmonella in raw meat and poultry by categorizing production establishments based on their rates of Salmonella according to current standards.

Categories are divided as follows, according to an FSIS news release:

Category 2 establishments are those with sample set results above half but not exceeding the current standard for one or both of their most recent sample sets and Category 3 are those that are exceeding the current standards. Category 1 establishments have the lowest Salmonella rates of the three categories with sample set results at or below half of the current standards.

Results from the verification sample set results from Categories 2 and 3 will be posted on the FSIS web site on March 28, 2008. The third quarter report from 2007 saw a significant change in the occurrence of Salmonella since the first quarter of 2007.  According the release:

Eighty-four percent of turkey slaughter establishments are now Category 1, the other 16 percent are in Category 2. These numbers represent significant improvement from the first quarter of 2007 where 53 percent of establishments were in Category 1, 38 percent in Category 2 and three percent at Category 3. For broilers, the percentage of establishments in Category 1 is 73 percent and the percentage of establishments in Category 2 is 23 percent. This figure is up by ten percent from the first quarter of 2007. This is compared with only 35.5 percent of broiler establishments performing in Category 1 after the first quarter of 2006.

Not only has FSIS been collecting thorough data on the progress of establishments in controlling the presence of Salmonella, but they have also developed the Salmonella Initiative Program which allows Category 1 establishments to utilize new procedures, equipment, and processing techniques to further improve the control Salmonella control.  The establishments who choose to take part in program collect samples every shift which are sent to FSIS for analysis so that even more data can be collected. 

FSIS is also focusing more on the large establishments that produce most raw beef rather than all of the smaller establishments that produce relatively small amounts of the nation’s raw ground beef supply. FSIS is also making sure that all sub-groups of establishments (i.e. all ratite or religious-exempt operations) are identified and sampled.  This data from all sub-groups is collected and compared to data from the CDC’s PulseNet to discover more information on what products under FSIS jurisdiction are causing foodborne illness.

Full post as published by Food Poisoning Law Blog on January 29, 2008 (boomark / email).