The Promise and Problems of HACCP: A Review of USDA’s Approach to Meat and Poultry Safety was made possible by support from The Pew Charitable Trusts. The findings and conclusions are exclusively the work of Consumer Federation of America and do not necessarily reflect the views of Pew.
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that every year 48 million Americans are sickened, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne disease. An unknown number of Americans develop long- term health complications, such as arthritis and kidney failure, as a result of contracting a foodborne illness. While the CDC statistics represent illness and death from pathogens for all food sources, meat and poultry products are clearly associated with foodborne illnesses and outbreaks. The CDC found that twenty-two percent of outbreak-associated illnesses and twenty-nine percent of outbreak-associated deaths were attributable to meat and poultry products from 1998 to 2008. Illnesses associated with meat and poultry products are estimated to cost U.S. society almost $7 billion each year. An analysis of the
pathogen/food pairs causing the greatest annual disease burden in the United States found that the top four were associated with meat and poultry products: Campylobacter in poultry, Toxoplasma in pork, Listeria in deli meats and Salmonella in poultry. Addressing the safety of meat and poultry products stretches back to the early 20th century when Upton Sinclair wrote his famous novel, The Jungle , which portrayed the harsh working conditions of the meatpacking industry and eventually spurred calls for stricter government oversight of the industry. When Congress passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act in 1906 and the Poultry Products Inspection Act in 1957 — the intent was clear: “It is essential in the public interest that the health and welfare of consumers be protected by assuring that meat and meat food products distributed to them are wholesome, not adulterated, and properly marked, labeled, and packaged.” The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is tasked with the responsibility of carrying out that public health mission through its meat and poultry inspection program. The agency is charged with protecting the public from the risks of contaminated meat and poultry products and the consequences of foodborne illness. Meat and poultry is sold to consumers with a seal of approval from the USDA which reads “Inspected and Passed,” communicating to the public that a government inspector has verified that the product they are about to purchase has met government standards for safety. Yet government inspectors are not inspecting every single piece of meat that is sold to consumers. Rather, inspectors verify the effectiveness of company food safety systems which produce meat and poultry products. This work is done through FSIS’s primary food safety program, the Pathogen Reduction/Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (PR/HACCP) regulation. FSIS also sets performance standards for reducing pathogens in meat and poultry products and implements sampling programs to identify whether a sample of products meet those standards. This report examines the history of FSIS’s PR/HACCP rule, including its relationship to pathogenreduction performance standards, and the impact of the Supreme Beef court case in weakening FSIS’s authority to enforce its regulations. The report reviews independent critiques by government investigators of FSIS’s PR/HACCP program, how the program has evolved over the years, and some of FSIS’s most recent changes. Finally, the report makes recommendations to improve the HACCP program to reduce meat and poultry contamination and better protect consumers from foodborne illness.”
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