09 October 2014
The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to declare four antibiotic-resistant strains of Salmonella (Antibiotic-Resistant Salmonella Heidelberg, Salmonella Hadar, Salmonella Newport, and Salmonella Typhimurium) as adulterants under federal law. In a petition filed with the agency CSPI says antibiotic-resistant (ABR) strains on meat and poultry were linked to at least 2,358 illnesses, 424 hospitalizations, and eight deaths - facts that CSPI says obligates USDA to keep those strains out of the food supply. In July, USDA denied without prejudice a 2011 CSPI petition asking the agency to declare ABR Salmonella strains that caused illnesses as adulterants in ground meat and poultry (USDA's denial of CSPI's 2011 petition came after the group filed a federal lawsuit against the agency for its failure to respond). The new petition is asking for expanded relief by covering all meat and poultry products, not just ground products. Since CSPI's 2011 petition, two multi-state outbreaks of ABR Salmonella Heidelberg linked to non-ground chicken products from Foster Farms have sickened 750 consumers and hospitalized 233.
In 1994, USDA declared E. coli O157:H7 an adulterant after it sickened more than 700 consumers and caused three deaths from undercooked hamburgers. The agency acted again in 2011 when it declared six strains of shiga-toxin-producing E. coli to be adulterants, though those strains weren't linked to a single outbreak in the United States from meat or poultry products. CSPI is also asking USDA to institute a sampling and testing program to detect the presence of the Heidelberg, Typhimurium, Newport, and Hadar strains of ABR Salmonella. Declaring strains of Salmonella to be an adulterant means that USDA could get tainted meat and poultry products out of the marketplace before they were linked to illnesses.
One reason USDA said it denied CSPI's 2011 petition was that ordinary cooking is sufficient to kill Salmonella. But CSPI said USDA failed to provide any scientific support for that assertion, and pointed to a number of studies indicating that consumers' cooking, handling, and cleaning practices do not adequately control the hazard at home.