Meat + Poultry - June 2006 - 29

On pathogen patrol
Salmonella in red meat gets U.S.D.A.'s attention
By Bernard Shire
meat&poultry@sosland.com

oultry will most often come to
mind when mentioning Salmonella. And while most of the attention of the U.S. Dept. Agriculture's
Food Safety and Inspection Service has
focused on poultry, the agency has started to voice concern about the increasing
levels of Salmonella in hogs, cows and
the meat products made
from these animals.
Last year, for the first
time, Salmonella rates
rose in the beef and pork
side of the industry, according to Dr. Daniel
Engeljohn
Engeljohn, F.S.I.S. deputy assistant administrator for policy
analysis and formulation. For that reason, F.S.I.S. has decided to strongly
push ahead with its Salmonella "initiative," a strong control program. And instead of looking strictly at chicken and
turkey, the agency is also focusing on
meat products.
"The Pathogen Reduction; Hazard
Analysis Critical Control Point rule established Salmonella performance standards in seven categories of raw meat
and poultry products," said Engeljohn.
"They include broilers, market hogs,
cows/bulls, steers/heifers, ground beef,
ground chicken and ground turkey."
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June 2006

Increasing incidences
"During 2005, for the first time, the incidence of Salmonella rose in all the categories except for ground beef," Engeljohn
said. "For that reason, Dr. Richard Raymond, U.S.D.A. under secretary for food
safety, and Dr. Barbara Masters, F.S.I.S.

"During 2005, for the
first time, the incidence
of Salmonella rose in all
the categories except for
ground beef."
administrator, decided the agency had to
go after the pathogen aggressively in both
poultry and meat, not just on the poultry
side, even though right now most of our
energy is still aimed there."
From F.S.I.S.'s perspective, the
Salmonella initiative is very timely,
according to Engeljohn, who is responsible for writing most of the agency's
regulations. "We've really been concerned over the past two years about
the upward trend in the industry, but
the increase during the past year actually got worse," he says.
The agency doesn't really know why
it has increased, according to Engel-

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john. "We suspect that the HACCP
plans being used both in the meat and
poultry industries are designed to deal
with Salmonella, but that some plants,
for whatever reasons, aren't doing it,"
he says.
Plans are being carried out with carelessness, he adds. "Just because there's
something in the plan doesn't mean it
always happens," he says.
The highest positive rates and largest
increases, according to Engeljohn, were
noted among poultry products (broiler
carcasses, ground chicken and ground
turkey) in large, small and very small
establishments. "For the second consecutive year, percent positive market
hog samples increased following four
consecutive years of declining rates,"
Engeljohn says. "Slight increases in
percent positive samples among beef
carcasses (steer/heifer and cow/bull
classes) were driven by small and very
small establishments."
However, for the second consecutive
year, the non-targeted testing program
failed to identify a single positive sample among beef carcasses from large establishments. More than 3,000 beef carcasses from large establishments have
been sampled during this two-year
Continued on Page 34

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Meat + Poultry - June 2006

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