Dive Brief:
- U.S. chicken and turkey producers are pushing back against an Agriculture Department plan to limit salmonella in raw poultry products, warning the move will raise grocery store prices.
- The proposal would require poultry companies to develop microbial monitoring systems and keep salmonella levels “at or below 10 colony forming units per gram/ml.” Poultry with any detectable level of one of six salmonella serotypes considered significant to public health will also be prevented from entering the supply chain.
- The rule is the culmination of a three-year effort and comes after the USDA finalized a rule to limit salmonella in certain frozen chicken products, the first time the agency recognized the bacteria as an “adulterant.”
Dive Insight:
Salmonella bacteria cause over 1 million human infections in the U.S. each year, with poultry among the leading sources of the foodborne illness. While data suggests that salmonella contamination in poultry has been decreasing, there hasn’t been a reduction in the number of illnesses.
For years, salmonella in raw poultry was not considered to be a threat to human health under the reasoning that the bacteria is typically neutralized in the cooking process. Under current rules, the USDA tracks the presence of salmonella within poultry products to determine whether processors are meeting set performance standards: For example, a company is considered to have proper food safety controls in place if 9.8% or less of broiler carcasses test positive for salmonella of any serotype.
Declaring salmonella an adulterant allows the agency to keep poultry processors accountable on food safety and ensure that harmful pathogens don’t enter the food supply. The National Chicken Council and other industry groups say that more regulation would raise costs for producers that would be passed down to grocery store shoppers.
“We support changes in food safety regulations that are based on sound science, robust data, and are demonstrated to positively impact public health,” Ashley Peterson, National Chicken Council senior vice president of scientific and regulatory affairs, said in a statement. “We are concerned this proposal is not based on any of those. It also has the potential to significantly raise the price of chicken at a time when Americans are dealing with inflation in every part of their lives.”
Consumer groups celebrated the salmonella rule for shifting more of the burden of food safety onto producers, though noted it doesn’t go far enough. The rule omits testing requirements for live birds and only bans six serotypes — three in poultry and three in turkey — out of the more than 2,500 identified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“For decades, consumers have had to pay the price for an ineffective and inefficient poultry inspection system that fails to hold companies accountable for shipping unsafe food to store shelves,” Thomas Gremillion, director of food policy at Consumer Federation, said in a statement, adding the rule “sets safety standards where they matter to consumers: on poultry products themselves, rather than on the establishments that process the birds.”