The U.S. Department of Agriculture needs to strengthen the way it approaches protecting humans from pathogens in poultry products, says a report by the Government Accountability Office. To do so, USDA "must set strict pathogen limits for
poultry products with the highest contamination rates and find ways to
measure a poultry plant’s success with these new standards," Kimberly Kindy reports for The Washington Post.
USDA set a standard of 7.5 percent for salmonella on whole chicken carcasses, but "ground poultry products and chicken parts—breasts, wings and drumsticks—have pathogen rates in the double
digits, partly because of the cutting and grinding processes that expose
the meat to more bacteria," Kindy writes. "A pathogen standard establishes the level of a bacteria that can
be found on a poultry product before it is declared unfit for commerce."
"Federal law does not prohibit the sale of poultry products
that are contaminated with pathogens, so the department has pledged
repeatedly to set limits for the most dangerous pathogens—salmonella
and campylobacter," Kindy writes. But the report noted that USDA "missed a
Sept. 30 deadline for setting salmonella and campylobacter limits for
chicken and turkey parts as well as campylobacter in ground turkey. It
also missed a deadline for updating the rate of salmonella allowed in
ground poultry, which is currently more than 44 percent for both chicken
and turkey."
The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said that by the end of 2014 it will issue new
pathogen standards and create a way to measure how well poultry plants
are meeting the standards, Kindy writes. (Read more)
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