Twenty-five years ago, when our board co-chair, Michael Taylor, was administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), he helped put in place a new food safety regulatory program to prevent foodborne illness from meat and poultry. This program was created in response to the tragically historic 1992-93 illness outbreak caused by ground beef contaminated with a particularly dangerous pathogen called E. coli O157:H7.
... Those rules were effective for ground beef because we had a scientific basis for declaring that particular strain of E. coli an adulterant. This meant that USDA could use its inspection and enforcement tools to keep the pathogen out of beef products, and industry had a powerful regulatory incentive to develop and implement innovative preventive measures. It was a major advance in food safety at the time. But, while the FSIS program has improved beef safety, its provisions related to poultry have not succeeded in significantly reducing the many illnesses and deaths caused by two other dangerous kinds of bacteria — Salmonella and Campylobacter — commonly present in chicken and turkey.
This issue has vital importance for public health and for consumer trust in the safety of poultry. The two bacteria of concern account for over 70 percent of the illnesses transmitted commonly by food and tracked by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention through its FoodNet surveillance system, sickening an estimated 1.9 million Americans each year. Some 21 percent of the Salmonella cases and more than 66 percent of the Campylobacter cases are attributed specifically to poultry.
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