USDA declares salmonella an 'adulterant' in breaded chicken

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

Source: UPI News

Aug. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Agriculture is taking new steps to protect against salmonella in poultry by declaring the bacteria an adulterant in breaded and stuffed raw chicken products.

The agency's Food Safety and Inspection Service announced Monday breaded raw poultry products will be subject to regulation if they exceed a lower level of salmonella.

FSIS is planning to set the new limit at one colony forming unit of salmonella per gram for breaded raw chicken to significantly reduce the risk of illness. FSIS will also take public comment on whether it should drop the regulatory level down to zero tolerance to make sure contaminated products are never sold.

"Food safety is at the heart of everything FSIS does," said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. "That mission will guide us as this important first step launches a broader initiative to reduce salmonella illnesses associated with poultry in the U.S."

Read more: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/usda-declares-salmonella-an-adulterant-in-breaded-chicken/ar-AA10c7BJ

[Orrex]

1. Has Trump's extremist Christofascist sCOTUS blocked it yet?

[JoeOtterbein]

2. Good.

People in retail foodservice have been pushing this for a long time.

[halfulglas]

3. One of the biggest problems we have already though is

We don't have enough inspectors in poultry plants for the bacteria levels we have now. Just like they limit the money for hiring IRS professionals to do due diligence on finding tax cheats, they don't want to give enough money for safety inspections or anything else. Federal employees, even though they may vote Republican, are the enemy of Republicans. The only federal employees Republicans want are the ones who they can control - by "giving" them jobs, controlling how much they make, everything. They think of them as parasites taking the taxpayers' money unless the person taking the money is them.

P.S. One of the significant things apparently the put in this new bill awaiting the imprimatur from Sinema has some money in it for hiring some more IRS workers to give the people processing those checks some help.

[Major Nikon]

4. There's a couple of ways to look at this

Let’s say we had we had poultry inspectors at every factory doing all the necessary testing required for a production facility. In effect this would be subsidizing the industry. A better approach is to inspect the company’s own internal inspectors through audits to make sure they aren’t cheating. This is essentially what the USDA does. Through random sampling it’s relatively easy to see if producers are meeting mandated pathogen levels. If they are, then regulation is effective. The other side of this is if producers aren’t meeting those standards, people can and do sue when outbreaks occur. That forces insurance companies to impose their own restrictions on the industry.

Simply changing the regulated levels will have an effect.

[halfulglas]

5. Thank you. I didn't think of that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Seems strange that calling it an "adulterant" gives them more powers than at present

It would be perfectly reasonable to call it a pathogen, because it causes disease. "Adulterant" is rather a catch-all term, some of which is not very serious:

A substance added to a product but not listed as an ingredient, or a substance that ends up in a product by accident when the product is made. Adulterants may be in foods, drugs, and other products. An adulterant may cause a product to be harmful, cheaper to make, or not work as it should.

https://www.cancer.gov/publications/dictionaries/cancer-terms/def/adulterant

[Martin68]

7. That was my reaction, too. Salmonella is endemic to chickens, as I understand it.

They must have chosen the term "adulterant" because it carries with it stiffer penalties or clearer criteria for invoking them.

[ToxMarz]

8. Possibly gives producers more liability for preventative protection

If it not something that is supposed to be there, whether intentional or unintentional, if you bite into a cherry pit in a cherry pie, you could probably only get actual damages as a judgement. If you bite into broken glass or a dead rat, the sky's the limit.