Consumer Reports praises proposed standard for protecting consumers by keeping poultry contaminated with dangerous Salmonella levels off the market.
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Under a new regulatory framework proposed today by the USDA, poultry contaminated with Salmonella above a certain level would not be allowed on the market and would be subject to recall. Consumer Reports applauded the agency’s framework, which aims to prevent people from getting sick from contamination.
“The USDA’s new framework is a momentous and significant step toward protecting consumers from harmful Salmonella bacteria,” said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy for Consumer Reports. “Far too much poultry contaminated with dangerous Salmonella ends up on the market and winds up on our plates, sickening hundreds of thousands of people every year.”
Ronholm continued, “By establishing final product standards that strictly limit Salmonella levels allowed in poultry, the USDA’s proposed rule will encourage processors to step up contamination prevention efforts and lower the risk that the chicken and turkey you bring home from the grocery store will make you sick.”
The USDA’s proposed regulatory framework creates a final product standard for Salmonella of 10 colony forming units (CFUs) for chicken carcasses, chicken parts (legs, wings, breasts, thighs), ground chicken, and ground turkey. Poultry exceeding that threshold and contaminated with certain strains would be barred from the market and subject to recall.
For any chicken product to be considered of public health concern, it would have to be at or above 10 CFU for any Salmonella and have detectable levels of the three serotypes: Enteritidis, Typhimurium, and l,4 [5], 12:i -. For ground turkey to be considered of public health concern, it would have to be above 10 CFU for any Salmonella and have detectable levels of the following three serotypes: Typhimurium, Hadar, and Muenchen.
While Salmonella can be spread through many foods, poultry is a leading source. According to the USDA, over one million Americans are sickened by Salmonella every year, including 125,000 chicken-associated and nearly 43,000 turkey-associated infections annually. Typical Salmonella infection symptoms include nausea, vomiting, severe stomach cramps, diarrhea and low-grade fever.
Salmonella contamination is widespread in chicken in part because of the often crowded and filthy conditions in which they are raised. A 2022 CR investigation, for example, found almost one-third of ground chicken samples tested contained salmonella. Of those, 91 percent were contaminated with one of the three strains that pose the biggest threat to human health: Infantis, Typhimurium, and Enteritidis.
Michael McCauley, michael.mccauley@consumer.org