The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) oversees meat, poultry, and egg products, accounting for 20 percent or less of the food supply. The majority of the food supply (80 percent or more) is regulated by FDA. USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) ensures that the U.S. meat, poultry, and processed egg supply is safe and properly labeled.
Scientists from USDA’s Agricultural Research Service are exploring how “transgenerational protection”—which is the ability of layer hens to pass along their resistance to Salmonella to their broiler chicks—can be encouraged, to ultimately reduce early colonization that introduces microbial contamination at the processing plant and poses a food safety risk to consumers.
To encourage the use of Salmonella vaccines for poultry flocks, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) intends to exclude current commercial vaccine subtypes of Salmonella confirmed in FSIS raw poultry samples from the calculation used to categorize establishments under the raw poultry Salmonella performance standards.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has published data on recalls and public health advisories issued in the case of a food safety incident in 2023.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) recently published a summary of the six foodborne illness outbreak investigations involving FSIS-regulated products that took place during Fiscal Year (FY) 2023.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has announced a modified Time-Limited Trial to include a swine study as part of the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS).
Researchers at USDA have developed a thermal pasteurization method based on Radio Frequency technology that effectively reduces the presence of Salmonella in intact eggs, in a fraction of the time required for traditional pasteurization.
In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we are joined by Brian Ronholm, Director of Food Policy for Consumer Reports, who lends his insight as a consumer advocate and former regulator to a discussion around food regulatory policy and food safety legislation. We dissect a variety of current events in food safety, such as toxic heavy metals in baby foods and food additives legislation, from multiple perspectives, including industry, consumer, regulatory, and consumer advocate.
The Consumer Goods Forum’s Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) is opening a new stakeholder consultation today under the Technical Equivalence Program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture Agricultural Marketing Service (USDA AMS) Harmonized GAP Plus+ version 4.0.
In light of USDA-FSIS’s proposed regulatory framework to reduce Salmonella illnesses attributable to poultry, a recently published report by the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) provides guidance on microbiological criteria that might be used to identify and incentivize effective intervention strategies.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) recently highlighted its key achievements in 2023 that helped strengthen food safety and the supply chain, including efforts on a new regulatory framework to crack down on Salmonella in poultry.