Most chicken products and some turkey products will need to meet stricter standards on Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination starting in May.
New federal standards governing chicken pieces and ground chicken and turkey are expected to prevent about 50,000 illnesses yearly. In implementing the new standards, federal food safety authorities plan to disclose to the public more information on how well individual poultry processors meet the pathogen reduction standards, according to a Federal Register notice published Feb. 11.
The Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service will, effective May 11, start evaluating whether poultry producers meet the new standards for controlling contamination in chicken pieces and ground chicken and turkey products. By setting the new limits on acceptable amounts of contamination, the agency intends for poultry producers to improve sanitation and other interventions enough to prevent about 43,000 illnesses connected with chicken parts, 4,000 with ground chicken, and 3,000 with ground turkey.
Those figures would represent a 30 percent decline in salmonellosis, a 32 percent decline in Campylobacter-related illnesses connected with the chicken products, and—because Campylobacter prevalence already is low in turkey—a 19 percent decline in Campylobacter-related illnesses associated with ground turkey.
The standards on chicken parts alone will affect about two-thirds of the poultry sold in the U.S., according to USDA data
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