Consumers expect meat and poultry to be safe. Yet, they cannot evaluate the safety of the products they buy because food safety cannot be readily observed. Even with advances in screening technologies, meat and poultry companies may, at times, be unaware that they are mistakenly producing products with an inappropriate level of food safety. Federal food safety regulations exist to provide independent levels of oversight designed to protect public health.
Some meat and poultry buyers have a greater need for food safety, especially organizations that serve food to hospital patients, the elderly, and other groups at a higher risk from foodborne illnesses. These commercial buyers can stipulate additional tests, audits, or food safety controls through specialized contracts with meat and poultry companies. Earlier ERS research had shown that most chicken plants are under contracts with commercial buyers and that the use of contracts with standards that are more stringent than the standards required by FSIS was correlated with lower Salmonella levels.
In recent years, USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has recognized that, except for information about product recalls, few market signals for food safety exist to help guide meat and poultry purchasing decisions by large retailers and other commercial buyers. As a partial remedy, FSIS established and publicly shared some food safety performance information for poultry plants on their Web site. A recent ERS study found that public disclosure of this food safety performance information was correlated with notable reductions in Salmonella levels. These findings led ERS researchers to conclude that this additional information enabled retailers, restaurants, nursing homes, and other large commercial buyers to seek out better performing plants, which encouraged all plants to improve food safety performance.
To read the rest of the story, please go to: Amber Waves / USDA ERS
