USDA Proposes Tougher Food Safety Standards for Chicken and Turkey

From USDA:

Posted by Al Almanza, USDA Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, on January 21, 2015 at 2:00 PM

The graphic above illustrates how proposed new federal standards could help reduce poultry-related Salmonella illnesses by an estimated 50,000 each year. Click to enlarge.

It’s no secret that Americans eat a lot of chicken and turkey. In fact, USDA estimates that a single American will eat 102 pounds of poultry in 2015. It is USDA’s job to ensure the meat and poultry products we enjoy are also safe to eat, and that means adapting federal food safety regulations to meet changes in production technology, scientific understanding of foodborne illness, and consumer demand.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over 1 million Americans contract foodborne Salmonella poisoning each year, and 200,000 of those illnesses can be attributed to poultry. Today, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service proposed new food safety standards that would reduce Salmonella and Campylobacter, another common cause of foodborne illness, on ground chicken and turkey, as well as chicken legs, breasts and wings, which represent the majority of poultry items that Americans purchase and feed their families.

By taking specific aim at lowering contamination on these products, an estimated 50,000 cases of foodborne illness could be averted annually.

Since 1996, FSIS has used pathogen reduction performance standards to measure the food safety performance of meat and poultry businesses.  With this proposal, FSIS would make the performance standards for ground poultry tougher to meet, which would reduce Salmonella and Campylobacter levels on ground poultry nationwide. FSIS implemented performance standards for whole chickens in 1996 but has since learned that Salmonella contamination levels increase as chicken is further processed into parts. By creating a first-time-ever standard for chicken parts, and by performing regulatory testing at a point closer to the final product, FSIS can greatly reduce consumer exposure to Salmonella and Campylobacter.

In addition, FSIS is proposing to be more strategic in the way we schedule microbial tests for Salmonella and Campylobacter at poultry facilities so we can gain a better picture of the food safety realities from business to business. Currently, we schedule a “set” of 52 samples at a facility, which are taken on consecutive days once the set is started. Facilities are categorized according to the number of samples that test positive in their set. Some retailers will only purchase chicken from the top category, so companies are motivated to be among those performers who meet or do better than the national performance standard. By stretching a sample set out over the course of a year so that samples are not collected on consecutive days, and by not alerting the company that the sample will be collected, results will be less affected by intermittent seasonal or production changes, and it will take longer for a company to move from a lower to a higher category. This should prompt companies to take meaningful steps that have a long lasting impact on the safety of their products.

The steps we are proposing are major pieces of FSIS’ Salmonella Action Plan, which the agency developed and released in 2013 to reduce Salmonella illnesses from meat, beef and pork. Collectively, these three foods contribute to about one third of all Salmonella illnesses, and FSIS aims to significantly reduce that number to meet the U.S. government’s Healthy People 2020 goals.

It's all about the Sides

From USDA:

Posted by Amelia Kermis, MPH CHES, Food Safety Education Staff, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA, on December 18, 2014 at 9:30 AM

By keeping your side dish components separate, you can avoid cross-contamination.

Main dishes may dominate most holiday tables, but the space on your plate will probably be filled with more sides than whatever holiday meat is served. Proper food handling and cooking will make sure these items come out just as safe and delicious as your main meat.

Making a safe side dish can be even harder than making a main dish safely because side dishes usually contain many ingredients. The more ingredients in the dish the greater the opportunity there is for cross-contamination. By keeping your side dish components separate, you can avoid cross-contamination.

Below is a list of holiday side dishes that offer unique food safety challenges.

Casseroles

Kugel, a traditional Jewish dish, and many other types of casseroles served during winter holidays, contain eggs. As with all dishes containing egg, Salmonella bacteria are a concern. You cannot tell if an egg contains Salmonella. In fact, the bacterium has been found inside even a clean, unbroken egg.

The only way to make sure these dishes are safe to eat is by fully cooking the eggs they contain. You know the dish is fully cooked when a thermometer inserted into the center of the mixture reaches 160 °F.

Cook casseroles completely at one time – do not partially cook them and then finish cooking later. Harmful bacteria will grow between the time you start and finish cooking, even if you refrigerate the food in between. Those bacteria may produce toxins that can make you sick.

Meaty Sides

Lots of holiday side dishes include meat. Whether you’re serving Brussels sprouts and bacon, stuffing with sausage, or another meaty accompaniment, make side dishes containing meat with extra care. The following tips will help ensure your meaty sides are food safe:

• Cook raw meat, poultry, or shellfish ingredients to safe temperatures before adding to the rest of the side’s ingredients. This reduces the risk of food poisoning from the bacteria that may be found in the raw ingredients.
• Stuffing is safe to eat when the center reaches 165 °F. This is particularly important for stuffing inside a roast or containing meat.
• Resist the temptation to taste your side dish before it is fully cooked. Eating undercooked meat, poultry, and egg products can place you at increased risk for food poisoning.
• Cook your meaty side dishes after you prepare your sides that will not be cooked. This prevents cross-contamination.

Ready-to-Eat Sides

If you are in a rush this holiday and plan to pick up a meat or cheese tray to bring to a party, make sure the tray is refrigerated in the store. You should also keep the tray cold until serving because these cut items provide bacteria a wonderful environment to replicate in. Be careful to keep it separated from raw meat and poultry.

If you want to serve precooked appetizers such as mini quiche make sure you have your food thermometer nearby. Check the internal temperatures of a sampling of these items to confirm they’ve reached a safe internal temperature before serving.

Tis the Season to Avoid Raw Meat

From USDA:

Posted by Megan Buckles, Congressional and Public Affairs Staff, Food Safety and Inspection Service, USDA, on December 11, 2014 at 10:00 AM

Everyone loves spending time with family and friends enjoying special winter treats, but you might want to think twice before reaching for some traditional dishes. Raw meat dishes like tartare may be more common this time of year, but they still come with health risks.

“Tiger meat” is another traditional winter dish. Despite the name, this dish is not made using meat from tigers. It’s a holiday mixture of raw ground beef, raw eggs, onions and other seasonings served on rye bread or crackers. Beef tartare, tiger meat, and dishes alike have ground beef and eggs that pose a health hazard when eaten undercooked or raw.

Not All Traditions Are Safe

Raw ground beef has been associated with several large outbreaks of foodborne illness. In 2012, an E. coli O157:H7 outbreak that sickened 17 people in Wisconsin was caused by this traditional dish.

E. coli infections can ruin your holiday, causing severe stomach cramps and diarrhea, kidney failure, and even death. E. coli is particularly dangerous for people with weakened immune systems, children, and older adults.

In addition to E. coli, eating raw ground beef and raw egg can expose you to Salmonella, Listeria, and Campylobacter bacterium.

Cook To the Right Temperature

Most bacteria in meat, poultry, seafood, and eggs can be killed by thorough cooking. To prevent illness, ground beef should always be cooked to an internal temperature of 160 °F. The only way to tell if the temperature is right is with a food thermometer. Color is not an accurate indicator that ground beef is fully cooked. Also, if you’re cooking another dish like meatballs or meatloaf, remember not to try any of the dishes before cooking, even if you just want to taste the seasoning.

Raw beef being ground into a bowl.

New Frontiers of Food Safety

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Joyce Hunter, Deputy CIO, Policy and Planning, U.S. Department of Agriculture, on April 17, 2014 at 10:00 AM

Over the last few decades, food safety has been marked by profound social, economic and political evolutions and technological breakthroughs such as 3D printing of food and the adoption of laboratory testing for pathogens. Laboratory testing for pathogens continues to evolve with the advancement of genome sequencing. However, there is always more to do.  There is a potential for advancing existing and promoting greater gains in the future.

What if there were more apps that could allow farmers, producers, consumers and stakeholders access to USDA data? The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) posts a variety of reports using data collected while inspecting and testing meat and poultry products, but more and more, people want direct access to the information.  For instance, what if a consumer could walk into a grocery store, scan a product, and instantly know where it was produced or where it was farmed? What if a farmer had an app that directly informed them about crop forecasting or crop variations? What if people and organizations who would never have had the opportunity before could individually and collectively mash up data in unique and exciting ways, leading to new opportunities to solve complex problems? The potential is endless as more tools are becoming available.

Liberating data in machine and human readable formats is a 21st century way of sharing information.  By sharing data and the tools to analyze it, people can develop new insights and applications to help themselves.  For agriculture, shared research can move us all closer to addressing the global food demands on the horizon. Our food and agricultural challenges have no borders and neither should our data.  At USDA, we recognize the importance of communities collaborating and generating ideas.  Open data in agriculture allows us to pool our existing resources while pioneering fresh, new approaches to tackle the global challenges that lie ahead.

One of the USDA data sets published this quarter offered Salmonella and Campylobacter datasets for the first time. FSIS is dedicated to reducing Salmonella as seen by the Salmonella Action Plan, as well as committed to being transparent.  “The Food Safety and Inspection Service recognizes the value in public data access and sees this dataset as an important step in that direction.  We’re interested to see how the public uses this dataset to help keep food safe and prevent foodborne illnesses,” said Christopher Alvares, Director of FSIS’ Data Analysis and Integration Staff.

Citizens can realize considerable value if more open policies, specifically Open Data, become more widely adopted throughout our agencies. In a recent study published by McKinsey, in which it examined the anticipated impact of Open Data across seven domains (education, transportation, consumer products, electricity, oil and gas, health care, and consumer finance), it found that Open Data could contribute a minimum of $3 trillion in additional value annually. So for areas of economic struggle, or where there is an emphasis on revenue generation and job creation, Open Data could lead to new opportunities across a number of industries and, by extension, across their societies as a whole.

"Safety Datapalooza" Brings More Usability of FSIS Salmonella Data

USDA Blog Post:

Posted by Megan Buckles, Public Affairs Specialist, USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service, on April 15, 2014 at 10:00 AM

On Jan. 14, 2014, nearly 400 people participated in the second annual “Safety Datapalooza” at USDA headquarters.  The event, hosted by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy and Office of Public Engagement, U.S. Department of Transportation and USDA, recognized innovators from the private, nonprofit and academic sectors who have freely used available government data to build products, services and apps that advance public safety in creative and powerful ways.

During a breakout session, Christopher Alvares, Director of FSIS’ Data Analysis and Integration Staff, explained the agency’s recently released Salmonella Action Plan and testing programs aimed at reducing the number of illnesses associated with FSIS-regulated products using new standards, strategies and innovation.  “FSIS produces regular reports on Salmonella contamination in regulated product, but the data had never been available in machine-readable format or in a single place,” said Alvares.  Up until now, this data had been available only from report to report spanning many years.  Today, this data is available as one source and in one place.

After the Safety Datapalooza, FSIS wanted to encourage the spirit of innovation and reinforce its commitment to maintaining transparency by posting the FSIS Quarterly Salmonella and Campylobacter Summary dataset on Data.gov. The data comes from FSIS’ Quarterly Salmonella Reports going back to 2006 and lists the numbers of samples tested and the percentage that tested positive. The samples come from routine verification sampling programs conducted by FSIS and are collected by FSIS inspectors at federally inspected meat and poultry establishments and tested at FSIS testing laboratories.

FSIS is dedicated to transparency and reducing Salmonella as seen by the Salmonella Action Plan.  “One of the agency’s goals, as stated in our Strategic Data Analysis Plan, is to improve the accessibility and usability of FSIS data. We wanted to know what the public could do with the data to help prevent illnesses and what other data may be needed for better mashups and results,” said Alvares.

The release of this data builds upon the Safety Data Initiative launched by the White House in May 2012.  This initiative aims to make government data relating to every aspect of public and product safety, from crime to roadway safety to food safety, more accessible, as well as encourage the development of innovative apps and services fueled by those data to empower Americans with the information and tools to make smarter, safer choices.

For more information about Salmonella and the Salmonella Action Plan, visit the FSIS Salmonella and Salmonellosis website.