Meat + Poultry - March 2016 - 16

WA S H I N G T O N

Prioritizing
safer poultry
For a long time, the American poultry industry has
faced criticism about the fact that Salmonella and
Campylobacter exist on raw chickens and turkeys. The
amount of the pathogens that exists has been fairly high
compared to raw poultry in other
parts of the world.
On the surface, the issue
wouldn't have appeared to be a
huge one, because unlike beef,
which some people like rare,
most consumers of turkey and
chicken, know better than to
serve it undercooked. Most know
to cook poultry until it's fully
cooked, i.e. "done". And some
even use a meat thermometer to
be sure it reaches at least 165˚ F.
Unfortunately, even though many
consumers know they should cook
USDA is
poultry fully, not everyone does.
Even so, the poultry industry and
hoping it will
the government feel the priority
be able to cut
to eliminate Salmonella and
back customer Campylobacter on raw poultry -
two pathogens that have plagued
exposure to
Salmonella and the industry - is an important one.
So the industry and US Dept.
Campylobacter, of Agriculture's Food Safety and
Inspection Service (FSIS) have
and reduce
been working hard for quite a long
the amount
time to control the pathogens.
of illnesses
With a new pathogen reduction
plan in place, USDA hopes to
experienced
reduce Salmonella by 30 percent
by people
and Campylobacter by 32 percent.
from these two
The battle against Salmonella
in
chicken
has been and continues
pathogens.
to be a long one. Twenty years
ago, FSIS implemented performance standards for whole
chickens, as part of the Pathogen Reduction/HACCP Rule.
But in the ensuing 20 years, the regulatory agency has
discovered that Salmonella levels actually get higher as
chicken is further processed into parts or sections.
And over the past 20 years, consumers haven't been
buying and cooking whole chickens as much as they used

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MEAT+ POULTRY | 03.16 | www.meatpoultry.com

to. Instead, parts like poultry thighs, wings and breasts
represent about 80 percent of the chicken products
Americans bought in 2016, with only 20 percent being
whole broilers. There has even been an increase in
consumption of turkey parts today, with more people not
only consuming turkey on holidays like Thanksgiving and
Christmas, but instead eating more of it year-round.
FSIS really hiked up its efforts to begin fighting
Salmonella more seriously three years ago, when it
released its Salmonella Action Plan. This plan created
a means for the regulatory and public health agency to
take on this pathogen, with new pathogen standards for
Salmonella and Campylobacter on chicken parts, ground
chicken and ground turkey. Last year, the agency proposed
these new standards. The performance standard that's
been approved after comments that were made about
the proposal by industry, consumer groups, and other
interested parties fulfills many of the goals that FSIS had in
its 2013 plan. USDA didn't wait for the final approval of this
plan, however. After it proposed the standards last year,
FSIS started using routine sampling during the whole year
in plants. Before that, it had done some sampling on an
infrequent basis on consecutive days to find out whether
the processes plants were carrying out were reducing
levels of Salmonella and Campylobacter effectively.
Once plants have carried out a set of testing under the
new, tougher standards, FSIS will begin publicizing online
which plants pass or fail the new, harder standards.
By creating this performance standard for chicken and
turkey parts, and by carrying out regulatory testing at a
place that is closer to the final product, which is mostly
poultry parts, USDA is hoping it will be able to cut back
customer exposure to Salmonella and Campylobacter,
and reduce the amount of illnesses experienced by
people from these two pathogens. The new performance
standards will be applied to raw chicken parts, and
not-ready-to-eat ground chicken and ground turkey.
These microbiological standards limit how many
product samples can test positive for a pathogen, or in this
case, either of two pathogens. USDA uses these results
to decide how safe the poultry plants are. By making the
standards harder to achieve, USDA hopes poultry that is
less contaminated with these pathogens will get into the
American food supply.
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Meat + Poultry - March 2016

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