USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service has proposed a framework that would prevent some poultry products contaminated with certain salmonella levels from entering the market, and make those items subject to recall.
FSIS released the framework Monday following a nearly three-year effort to revamp its strategy to protect American consumers from foodborne illnesses associated with poultry products.
“Far too many consumers become sick from poultry contaminated with salmonella, and today’s announcement marks a historic step forward to combat this threat,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a release. “This proposed framework is a systematic approach to addressing salmonella contamination at poultry slaughter and processing, which includes enforceable standards that will result in safer food for consumers and fewer illnesses.”
The proposed final product standards would apply to raw chicken carcasses, chicken parts, ground chicken and ground turkey. Any of these products with salmonella levels at or above 10 colony forming units (CFU) per gram or milliliter would not be able to enter the market. Additionally, any detectable level of at least one of the salmonella serotypes of public health significance would make a product ineligible for commerce.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that salmonella bacteria cause over 1 million human infections in the U.S. each year. FSIS estimates there are 125,000 chicken and almost 43,000 turkey-associated foodborne salmonella illnesses annually.
The agency has taken other actions to address these outbreaks, such as the final determination to declare certain levels of salmonella an adulterant in raw, breaded, stuffed chicken products earlier this year.
This earlier rule labeled products with one CFU level an adulterant. The latest proposed framework allows for a higher contamination threshold because it's expected consumers are more likely to properly cook these products, said José Emilio Esteban, undersecretary for food safety at FSIS.
Consumer groups applauded the proposed framework as a major step in protecting Americans from salmonella.
“The USDA’s new framework is a momentous and significant step toward protecting consumers from harmful salmonella bacteria,” said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports, in a release. “Far too much poultry contaminated with dangerous salmonella ends up on the market and winds up on our plates, sickening hundreds of thousands of people every year."
Ronholm added the proposed standards will push poultry processors to improve contamination prevention efforts.
Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at Consumer Federation, also celebrated the framework and said the proposed rule creates a “solid defense” against legal challenges from the poultry industry.
But while saying the proposed rule could significantly reduce salmonella infections, Gremillion also said it could have gone further. He said the proposal only limits products that test positive for “very high” levels of contamination, and should be expanded to include additional banned serotypes. Additionally, he criticized the proposed rule for leaving out testing requirements for live birds.
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The proposed framework suggests re-evaluating the serotypes of public health concern when updated human illness information becomes available, or every three to five years at a minimum. Gremillion said this is not enough, as past outbreaks have shown how quickly new variants and testing technology can emerge. He suggested the rule should formalize a mechanism to force a re-evaluation of the standards.
Esteban said the serotypes included in the proposal have been consistent for a long time and are responsible for a large amount of illnesses. Limiting these specific types is expected to reduce illnesses by 25%.
The serotypes whose detection would prevent raw chicken carcasses, chicken parts and comminuted chicken products from entering commerce are Enteritidis, Typhimurium and I,4,[5],12:I:-. For raw comminuted turkey, the applicable serotypes are Hadar, Typhimurium and Meunchen.
Additionally, the proposed framework would require poultry establishments to set up a microbial monitoring program to prevent contamination through the slaughter system.
The National Chicken Council suggested the proposal is not based on sound science or data and has the potential to raise the price of chicken for consumers.
"We support changes in food safety regulations that are based on sound science, robust data, and are demonstrated to positively impact public health. We are concerned this proposal is not based on any of those,” Ashley Peterson, senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs at NCC, said in a statement. “We remain committed to further reducing salmonella and look forward to reviewing the full proposal and providing comment on this significant, potential shift in regulatory policy."
Esteban said the proposal includes a three-year phase-in, meaning large plants are expected to come into compliance in year one, with medium and small plants meeting the standards in years two and three, respectively.
Additionally, he said the agency is proposing that it would offer laboratory services for small producers that may not have their own in-plant labs. This would cut down on some costs for these producers.
"About a million people get sick of salmonella every year. About a quarter of those is attributed by CDC to the consumption of poultry," Esteban said. "We can do better. And we think that industry is willing to do that."
FSIS received a petition in January 2021 from the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) and other consumer advocacy groups seeking "enforceable standards targeting salmonella types of greatest public health concern and all Campylobacter in poultry," the Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking said. Prior to that, it received a petition from the food safety law firm Marler Clark asking it "to issue an interpretive rule to declare 31 salmonella serotypes that have been associated with foodborne illness outbreaks to be adulterants of all meat and poultry products," the proposed rule said. FSIS denied the petition.
In October 2021, however, citing the CSPI petition and other input, it said it was "mobilizing a stronger, and more comprehensive effort to reduce salmonella illnesses associated with poultry products."
The proposed rule is open for comments over the next 60 days.
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