Washington - Large U.S. chicken processors have sharply reduced the level of salmonella since the roll- out of a new system for monitoring food safety, a senior U.S. Agriculture Department official said.
The percentage of positive tests for salmonella in chicken carcasses fell from 16% last year to 9% this year, said Tom Billy, administrator of the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service.
Billy attributed the improvement to chicken plants adopting a series of processing steps and scientific checks to prevent contamination. In January, the USDA began requiring all large meat and poultry plants to use the system, called Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), in addition to conventional examinations by USDA inspectors.
“We are seeing significant improvements already from plants under HACCP,” Billy told a House Agriculture subcommittee hearing. “In poultry, we've seen the level of salmonella positives go down by half already in the just the first three months.”
The USDA tests samples at meat and poultry plants for salmonella as part of the HACCP program now in place at all plants with more than 500 employees.
Salmonella tests for cattle carcasses also showed a decline but the results were based on much smaller samples than the chicken tests, Billy said. Results for salmonella tests on turkey carcasses so far this year were not yet available.
Republican and Democratic members of the subcommittee pressed Billy on how soon the USDA will move to eliminate or modify old meat inspection rules. Members of the panel expressed concern that as smaller plants adopt HACCP, beginning next January, they do not also have to comply with outdated regulations. “The progress (at FSIS) has been slow and sporadic,” said Rep. Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat. He added that it was “really not acceptable” for the FSIS to take a year to approve food safety technology such as steam vacuuming of carcasses.
Richard Pombo, a California Republican who chairs the subcommittee on livestock, said he was disappointed at the slow pace of FSIS's regulatory review that it began in 1995.
“As we continue to phase in HACCP the old system will disappear,” Billy said, adding that should happen by early 2000. “We are absolutely committed to regulatory reform.”
The USDA is encouraging plants to petition the department for pilot programs in which some of the old meat inspection regulations are set aside, Billy said. The FSIS is prepared to act on such petitions within a month, he added.
But the union representing federal meat inspectors criticized HACCP as “a back door to deregulate” meat and poultry.
“Under the HACCP honor system, contaminated meat could find its way to your dinner table even though USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service has determined that the establishment's processes as a whole are preventing adulteration,” Bobby Harnage, president of the American Federation of Government Employees, told the House panel.
The union sued the USDA in early April, claiming that the HACCP program ultimately aimed to eliminate meat and poultry inspectors. In some plants using HACCP, the union claimed that the number of inspection tasks performed by inspectors has been reduced from 500 to 40.
The USDA has maintained that HACCP will free up meat inspectors to perform other food safety tasks, and relies on a more scientific and efficient approach.
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