USDA withdraws a plan to limit salmonella levels in raw poultry

[RandySF]

The Agriculture Department will not require poultry companies to limit salmonella bacteria in their products, halting a Biden Administration effort to prevent food poisoning from contaminated meat.

The department on Thursday said it was withdrawing a rule proposed in August after three years of development. Officials with the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service cited feedback from more than 7,000 public comments and said they would “evaluate whether it should update” current salmonella regulations.

The rule would have required poultry companies to keep levels of salmonella bacteria under a certain threshold and test for the presence of six strains most associated with illness, including three found in turkey and three in chicken. If the levels exceeded the standard or any of those strains were found, the poultry couldn’t be sold and would be subject to recall, the proposal had said.

The plan aimed to reduce an estimated 125,000 salmonella infections from chicken and 43,000 from turkey each year, according to USDA. Overall, salmonella causes 1.35 million infections a year, most through food, and about 420 deaths, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.






https://apnews.com/article/poultry-salmonella-food-poisoning-usda-081dafd3c8a75c3ef2203d260584a893

[Doodley]

1. Are they trying to kill us?

[RandySF]

2. Yes

[LoisB]

4. They don't care. Maybe billionaires will have separate facilities where poultry is tested and

the Biden levels adhered to.

[Kid Berwyn]

5. If you have to ask how much...

...you can't afford safe food.

[LoisB]

7. Fact.

[Lonestarblue]

6. They probably send their private jets to Europe for their food. The EU has stricter regulations.

[LoisB]

8. I would not be surprised.

[LoisB]

3. Absolute insanity. Why would anyone not want their food to be safe for consumption?

[LetMyPeopleVote]

9. This scares me

People are going to get sick due to this stupidity

[hunter]

10. I only cook meat once or twice a year in my kitchen...

... usually for carnivorous friends and family.

I think the last time I had any sort of raw meat in my refrigerator or freezer was just before the COVID pandemic.

I didn't used to be this way but now just the idea of putting raw chicken in my refrigerator seems yucky. When I was a kid our family refrigerator and freezer were full of meat, some of it from animals I'd seen alive. Storing meat was the primary reason my parents had a refrigerator and a freezer.

My wife is vegetarian approaching vegan and I'm mostly vegetarian, largely because I'm too lazy to cook meat for myself. I'm also trying to reduce my environmental footprint.

I think I'm taking after my wild west great grandmothers who were always deeply suspicious of store-bought meat. They preferred to kill healthy animals themselves. I'm deeply suspicious of store-bought meat too but I'm not hungry enough for meat to kill animals myself.

Strict government regulation of the meat industry isn't a bad thing. It came about because the meat industry was literally killing people, its customers and employees both. It's still killing people, not so many these days as in the past, but I suppose the Trump administration has decided that, or even something more, is an acceptable loss.