Meat + Poultry - May 2005 - 75

Washington
Stricter standards for
R.T.E. products
By Bernard Shire
meat&poultry@sosland.com

The U.S. Dept. of Agriculture's Food
Safety and Inspection Service is moving closer to achieving a goal that it
has been working toward for more than
four years - requiring producers of
"ready-to-eat" and "heat-treated" meat
and poultry products to meet tougher
standards to prevent pathogens.
The latest steps toward adopting
performance standards for R.T.E.
products were taken at a recent public
meeting in Washington, D.C. F.S.I.S.
officials presented two draft risk assessments during the meeting and are
seeking comments about them. The
first deals with Salmonella, a pathogen killed by cooking, and the second
relates to Clostridium perfringens, a
pathogen destroyed by rapid cooling
after cooking.
The agency found that most cases
of foodborne illnesses caused by C.
perfringens can't be linked to poor
processing in meat plants. Improper
cold storage of R.T.E. and partially
cooked meat and poultry products at
retail and in consumers' homes could
be blamed for 93 percent of the illnesses. Improper hot holding of these
products accounted for another 4 percent of illnesses. Less than 1 percent of
sicknesses result from poor cooling of
products at meat processing plants.
U.S.D.A. efforts to write regulations
requiring processors to kill pathogens
during the cooking process in R.T.E.
meat and poultry products began in
February 2001. The lethality, or kill
step, would be determined by the probability of Salmonella surviving after
processing.
The agency has also proposed looking at the effect on public health changing the current cooling standards for C.
perfringens for R.T.E. and partially
cooked meat and poultry products.
F.S.I.S. would also like to determine
whether the steps it takes to limit the
76

MEAT&POULTRY

May 2005

growth of C. perfringens could protect
against botulism growth.
Six years ago, F.S.I.S. finalized a
regulation that established performance
standards for C. perfringens in cooked
beef, roast beef, cooked corned beef,
and fully and partially cooked meat
and poultry. The performance standards limited growth of this pathogen
in the products to one log. Two years
later, F.S.I.S. published a proposed
rule, in conjunction with the Salmonella proposal, to extend the existing
performance standards for the same
pathogen to all R.T.E. and partially
cooked meat and poultry products.
Both proposed parts of the "Performance Standards for the Production of
Processed Meat and Poultry Products"
rule got bogged
down after objections were raised.
Many from the
industry claimed
that U.S.D.A. was
using a "worstcase scenario" to
justify the most
conservative standards possible. Several trade associations said that F.S.I.S.
should take another look at that one-log
performance standard for C. perfringens, which many felt was too strict. In
the case of the Salmonella plan, industry representatives asked that alternative
"kill standards" for its reduction be
considered.
In 2002, U.S.D.A. went to the drawing board and began developing two
massive risk assessments, each of which
was hundreds of pages long. The assessments were presented at the meeting
this past March, and the agency hopes
to justify its proposed regulations.
Concerning Salmonella, the proposed
rule from 2001 requires processors to
achieve a 6.5-log reduction of the pathogen in R.T.E. categories of meat, including cooked, fermented, salt-cured and
dried. F.S.I.S. also studied the impact
of alternative kill-steps of 5 and 6.5-log
reductions of Salmonella in meat, and 7
logs in poultry products.
In the eyes of the industry trade associ-

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ations, F.S.I.S. could justify keeping the
performance standards for Salmonella
at 5 logs for ground beef, fermented
sausage and other products. Currently,
there are no Salmonella requirements for
anything other than cooked roast beef,
poultry and beef patties. Processors are
only required to follow their HACCP
plans for all other products.
For Clostridium, F.S.I.S. asked what
would be the impact on the probability
of human illness if the amount of growth
allowed is raised from one log (10-fold)
during cooling to two logs (100-fold) or
three logs (1000-fold). Industry groups
believe that the agency could justify
raising the allowable growth of C. perfringens from one log to two logs, with
few more projected illnesses.

Less than 1 percent of
sicknesses result from
poor cooling of products
at meat processing plants.
Dr. Dan Engeljohn, F.S.I.S. deputy
assistant administrator for policy analysis and formulation, predicted that
new regulations requiring processors
to reach certain lethality and cooling
levels in their products will probably
be finalized by the end of the year, if
not before. Because of the impact these
regulations will have, there is sure to
be a lot of give-and-take about them.
But when approval finally comes, these
regulations, piled on top of existing
ones, will make life even tougher for
both processors of R.T.E. and partially
cooked meat and poultry products.

Bernard Shire is a food safety
consultant for Shire & Associates in
Lancaster, Pa., and previously served
as director of legislative and regulatory
affairs for the American Association of
Meat Processors.
We would like to hear from you- your comments
and questions about this article are welcome.
E-mail the author at: meat&poultry@sosland.com

http://www.MEATPOULTRY.com

Meat + Poultry - May 2005

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