Did someone forward you this newsletter?

Get your own copy by subscribing here [[link removed]], and to share this story click here. [[link removed]]

Is Food & Power landing in your spam? Try adding [email protected] to your contacts.

Photo courtesy of iStock.

USDA Repeals New Poultry Salmonella Standards [[link removed]]

Salmonella is the most common cause of foodborne illness in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates [[link removed]] that 1.35 million Americans get sick from salmonella each year, and of those cases 26,500 people end up in the hospital and 400 die. Salmonella can live on many different foods, however, the most common source in the U.S. is chicken and turkey, which account for nearly a quarter [[link removed]] of all outbreaks.

The Biden administration proposed new standards to keep poultry tainted with the most dangerous types of salmonella off the market, which the Trump administration repealed [[link removed]] last week. While the framework was not perfect — food safety advocates thought [[link removed]] it should [[link removed]] go further [[link removed]] and small meatpacking plants felt overburdened [[link removed]] — it would have created real salmonella penalties for powerful poultry corporations for the first time in over two decades.

“The big guys didn’t want this,” says Thomas Gremillion, food policy director at the Consumer Federation of America. “With very rare exceptions, they are not held accountable for making people sick, they are externalizing the cost of foodborne illness onto the public. This rule would have forced them to internalize that cost a little bit.”

The current salmonella regulatory system for poultry is ineffective [[link removed]]. While the percentage of chicken products carrying salmonella has declined, salmonella infections from chicken have increased [[link removed]] over the past ten years.

USDA grades poultry processing plants based on the percentage of products that test positive for salmonella. A 2001 court decision prevented [[link removed]] USDA from shutting down meat processing plants that failed federal salmonella standards, rendering them unenforceable. Today, USDA merely publishes a list of plants that are not in compliance. As of the latest USDA data [[link removed]], nearly 14% of tested poultry plants failed to meet federal salmonella standards.

This standard focuses on the presence of salmonella in a plant, but not the load of salmonella on poultry, nor the type of salmonella present. There are hundreds of types of salmonella, but only a few cause most human illnesses, while one of the most common [[link removed]] types found in USDA sampling, Salmonella Kentucky, is not as dangerous.

Consumer advocates and some chicken processors asked the Biden administration [[link removed]] to create a more enforceable and risk-based standard. Advocates point to the success of E. coli regulations in beef, which reduced [[link removed].] E. coli illness by 40%, and salmonella standards in Europe, which cut salmonellosis in half over five years [[link removed]]. Both reforms banned the sale of meat containing the most dangerous serotypes of bacteria. Europe also set standards and targets [[link removed]] to reduce salmonella levels on poultry farms, especially poultry breeding farms [[link removed]], to cut down salmonella at the source [[link removed]] before it gets to the slaughterhouse.

The Biden administration’s new salmonella framework [[link removed]] focused mostly on preventing tainted products from entering the market by creating a new sampling and verification program. If poultry products tested positive for a certain amount of salmonella or any amount of six particularly virulent types of salmonella, they could not be sold.

The Trump administration withdrew this proposal with little justification [[link removed]]. USDA’s press office told CIDRAP news [[link removed]] that “The Biden-era proposal would have imposed significant financial and operational burdens on American businesses and consumers, failing to consider an effective and achievable approach to address Salmonella in poultry products."

Advocates think the Trump administration withdrew the rule to help big business. “It’s pretty obvious that this administration is focused on increasing corporate profits,” argues Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Vertically integrated chicken giants have been major Trump donors: Pilgrim’s Pride, the U.S.-based poultry arm of JBS, was the biggest corporate donor [[link removed]] to President Trump’s inauguration fund, contributing $5 million. Tyson Foods also contributed $1 million [[link removed]] and the owner of Mountaire Farms [[link removed]] was a top campaign contributor.

This framework would have cost industry, but Sorscher thinks large chicken corporations could afford to comply, just as beef processors adapted to similar E. coli rules. “It would have cost fractions of a penny per pound to invest in this rule, which was going to reduce illness for consumers, and industry wasn’t prepared to make that investment,” Sorscher says. “It shows you how consumers cannot rely on industry to make these decisions for itself.”

Advocates for small meatpacking plants more justifiably contended that the new standards could hurt them and the farmers they serve. “Regulating salmonella in the currently proposed manner has the very real potential to regulate many independent hatcheries, poultry growers, and small and very small plants out of existence,” wrote the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), in their comment [[link removed]] to USDA on the proposed framework. The alliance of over 140 organizations advocated for scale-appropriate regulations, such as monitoring proportional to production volumes and government cost-sharing to support implementation for small poultry plants. The proposed rule removed one of the more contentious requirements from which NSAC sought a small plant exemption, but it otherwise did not have many exceptions or supports for small plants.

NSAC also advocated for more salmonella intervention at the hatchery level, highlighting how big players up the supply chain can change salmonella levels across the industry. The USDA does not have the authority to regulate salmonella control practices on poultry farms, but upstream salmonella control played a significant role in Europe’s successful illness reduction.

Poultry breeding farms or hatcheries are particularly important because salmonella can transfer vertically from parents to chicks. Vaccinating parent chickens has been [[link removed]] linked [[link removed]] to decreases in salmonella illness. Just two companies, Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress (owned by Tyson), control [[link removed]] 90% [[link removed]] of the elite pedigree breeding stock from which all U.S. broilers descend. According to Gremillion, some chicken executives have complained that they struggle to buy breeding flocks that do not have salmonella. Aviagen and Cobb-Vantress do vaccinate [[link removed]] their breeding stock against some types of salmonella, but Sorscher says the companies are secretive about which ones.

We know that chicken breeders, integrators, and the USDA can work together to eradicate certain types of salmonella because they have largely done so [[link removed]] for select serotypes that make chickens sick. “We don’t really have the same thing for serotypes that make humans sick,” Sorscher says. “Industry has not prioritized human health; they prioritized their profits.”

Find and share this story originally published on [[link removed]] Food & Power [[link removed]] . [[link removed]]

What We're Reading

The Securities and Exchange Commission permitted JBS to list on the New York Stock Exchange, upsetting environmental and animal welfare groups that opposed the initial public offering due to JBS’s bribery, environmental destruction, and tax avoidance [[link removed]] charges. ( Inside Climate News [[link removed]] / World Animal Protection)

Pork producers Tyson, Clemens, and Triumph agreed to pay $64 million to settle pork price-fixing allegations. ( National Hog Farmer [[link removed]])

A U.S. company that acquired nearly 50,000 acres of land in Senegal with the intention of growing alfalfa for Saudi Arabia displaced local farmers, only to abandon the project and its local investors a year later but keep the land. This deal follows a trend of foreign-financed land grabs in Africa. ( Associated Press [[link removed]])

Donate to Support Food & Power [[link removed]] About the Open Markets Institute

Our team of reporters, lawyers, and economists works to revive competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, more innovative and sustainable economies, and a more secure and peaceful world.

Follow F&P on Twitter [[link removed]] | Subscribe [[link removed]] to this Newsletter | F&P Website [[link removed]] | Contact Us [[link removed]]

Tweet [link removed] Share [[link removed]] Forward [link removed]

Written by Claire Kelloway

Edited by Anita Jain

Open Markets Institute

655 15th St NW Suite 310

Washington D.C., xxxxxx

Unsubscribe [link removed]