CFA Statement on FSIS Proposal to Protect Consumers from Dangerous Salmonella in Poultry

Washington, D.C. - Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a long-anticipated proposed rule to protect consumers from foodborne illness caused by dangerous Salmonella contamination in poultry. Thomas Gremillion, Director of Food Policy at Consumer Federation, made the following statement:

"Today's proposed rule marks an important step forward for public health. 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. Today's rule sets safety standards where they matter to consumers: on poultry products themselves, rather than on the establishments that process the birds.

"An estimated 1.35 million consumers suffer from Salmonella infections in the U.S. each year, the single most costly foodborne pathogen. Poultry accounts for more of those infections-over 23%-than any other food category, and its contribution to foodborne illness has been growing for several consecutive years now. The current regulatory system-based on so-called 'performance standards' for poultry facilities, rather than standards defining when a poultry product is safe-have proven difficult to enforce and untethered to public health goals. By treating all Salmonella equally, they have created perverse incentives for companies to vaccinate flocks against common Salmonella serotypes, such as S. Kentucky, that rarely cause illness in humans.

"The proposed rule draws a line in the sand and declares chicken and turkey heavily contaminated with dangerous strains of Salmonella to be 'adulterated.' The science supports this interpretation of the law. The proposed rule puts to rest the antiquated notion that Salmonella, no matter how virulent, can never be considered an 'adulterant' because, in the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit's 1974 decision in American Public Health Association v. Butz : 'American housewives and cooks normally are not ignorant or stupid and their methods of preparing and cooking of food do not ordinarily result in salmonellosis.'

"Even back in 1974, the Butz court's misogynist rhetoric did not square with the epidemiological and microbiological data. But that did not stop the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit from citing Butz in its 2001 decision in Supreme Beef Processors, Inc. v. USDA, which sided with industry to invalidate FSIS rules designed to protect consumers from Salmonella contamination in meat and poultry.

"The proposed rule establishes a solid defense against similar legal challenges from the poultry industry. The science makes clear that poultry contaminated with high levels of virulent Salmonella will reliably make large numbers of people sick, and therefore should be considered adulterated. While some individuals may manage to avoid infection by scrupulously adhering to safe food handling practices, consumers should not have to wear a hazmat suit to cook dinner. The proposed rule holds industry accountable for doing its part to reduce the burden of foodborne illness risk.

"The rule is not perfect. It will only ban poultry products that test positive for very high levels of Salmonella contamination, and only when one of just three Salmonella serotypes associated with human illness are detected. FSIS should expand the list of banned serotypes. At a minimum, it should include Salmonella Infantis, a serotype of Salmonella increasingly found in poultry and associated with high levels of antimicrobial resistance, which has caused tens of thousands of illnesses in recent years, according to CDC estimates.

The proposed also fails to specify a mechanism for revisiting the Salmonella 'serotypes of public health concern' in a manner that keeps up with public health needs. The proposed rule expresses an intent to frequently re-evaluate the 'serotypes of public health concern' as new information on human illness becomes available, and 'every 3-5 years at a minimum.' But past experience shows new Salmonella variants of public health concern can emerge very quickly, as does new testing technology. Indeed, testing already exists that can identify Salmonella likely to cause illness on the basis of genetic factors associated with virulence, rather than serotype, which could support standards more tightly aligned with public health goals. The agency should consider formalizing a mechanism to force re-evaluation of the standards.

"Finally, the proposed rule omits important testing requirements for live birds. In the proposed regulatory framework that FSIS published in 2022, the agency said that it was 'considering requiring establishments to characterize Salmonella as a hazard reasonably likely to occur at receiving and that incoming flocks be tested for Salmonella before entering an establishment.' By abandoning those requirements, the proposed rule misses an opportunity to encourage better Salmonella control strategies on farm, and further up the supply chain, including at the elite breeding level. Just two companies, Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tyson Foods, produce virtually all of the breeding stock for the chicken industry. Because Salmonella bacteria is vertically transmitted from breeding stock to the "broilers" raised for food, these companies have a critical role to play in keeping dangerous Salmonella variants out of the food supply. So far, however, they have managed to evade any meaningful food safety regulation.

"Even with these shortcomings, the proposed rule will significantly reduce Salmonella infections, and improve public health. Critics of reform claim that the costs of recalls and otherwise complying with the rule will be too much for consumers to bear. Notably, industry made similar claims that banning E.coli O157:H7 in ground beef would be too costly. Now, as then, the facts suggest otherwise. The numerical threshold set by the proposed rule-10 Salmonella colony forming units per gram of product-would only affect 6 out of every 10,000 chicken products (0.06%) produced today, according to one recent risk assessment. Yet those heavily contaminated products cause a whopping 37% of the Salmonella infections caused by chicken, according to that same risk assessment.

As the evidence presented in the proposed rule suggests, relatively small investments in food safety can have an outsized effect on public health. But with little accountability for causing foodborne illness, sensible safeguards like the ones presented in the proposed rule are necessary to set a level playing field for industry. Consumers can support the proposed rule by submitting comments to FSIS during the next 60 days."

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