USDA Approves New Ways to Get Rid of Salmonella: The Controversy Continues

In uncharacteristically swift action, the federal government has approved--in less than a month’s time--two radical methods to combat rising levels of salmonella on chicken. As many as 60% of the carcasses in processing plants, it is estimated, harbor the potentially harmful bacteria.

Just last week, the Agriculture Department’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) approved the use of trisodium phosphate in a rinse to destroy bacteria. Earlier, on Sept. 18, the agency approved the use of irradiation to control potential contamination on poultry. A third procedure, to reduce salmonella contamination in beef, is expected to receive FSIS approval early next month.

The FSIS actions were praised by meat industry representatives as important new food safety weapons.

“We will continue to find these treatments and make improvements in the meat supply,” said industry analyst David Theno, president of Theno & Associates in Modesto. “Within five years, the industry leaders will affect these technologies and significantly improve meat products to the point where pathogens are present in far less than 10% of the total product.”

However, at this time no processor has indicated a willingness to use either irradiation or trisodium phosphates to treat chicken. “Results of the studies we have seen look quite promising,” said a spokesman for the National Broiler Council in Washington. “We expect broiler companies to take a very close look at this encouraging new technology.”

Meanwhile, consumer group representatives were sharply critical of the USDA rulings stating that the approvals were half-hearted measures that fail to address the original causes of poultry contamination such as conditions on farms.

“This is the cover-up approach,” said Ellen Haas, executive director of Public Voice for Food and Health Policy in Washington. “These approaches may bring new risks while not entirely wiping out the old risks.” Haas said that high-speed production lines in plants and over crowding of chicken carcasses in chiller tanks may still result in the spread of contamination.

“The USDA is acknowledging that they can not back up their guarantee that food currently inspected by the federal government is safe and wholesome,” said Rod Leonard, executive director of the Community Nutrition Institute in Washington and a former USDA official. “This reminds of me of the ‘General Motors syndrome’: get the chicken through the plant as fast as possible and then clean them up afterward. They assume the consumer is so stupid that he will buy anything.”

“These methods are not panaceas,” said H. Russell Cross, FSIS administrator in Washington. He warned that the poultry industry should not view the federal approvals of trisodium phosphate or irradiation as short cuts to good manufacturing processes. “This does not allow them to abuse the product. It doesn’t allow industry to produce a dirtier product and then think that the system will clean it up later.”

Trisodium phosphate, manufactured by Rhone-Poulenc, Inc., is a federally approved food ingredient. Jim Greene, an FSIS spokesman, said that tests conducted on food grade trisodium phosphate indicate that it has no discernible effect on the taste, texture or color of chicken.

The compound, Greene said, destroys salmonella by stripping a thin, exterior fat coating on the chickens. No residue is absorbed in the skin or meat. When carcasses were submerged in a water solution containing 8% trisodium phosphate at the end of the slaughter line, trials, conducted in Arkansas and Puerto Rico, showed that only 1% of the birds still contained salmonella organisms. By comparison, untreated carcasses had an 18% positive rate for salmonella.

An indirect side effect of both the trisodium phosphate and irradiation treatments is an extended shelf life for meat or poultry.

“The trisodium rinse is a preservative; irradiation is a preservative. And they are preservatives because the meat lasts longer on the shelf (after treatment). Therefore, they can not be designated as fresh, “ said Leonard.

Under current regulations, the USDA does not consider either trisodium phosphate or irradiation as preservatives. (Trisodium phosphate is as anti-microbial agent and irradiation is a physical process to control bacteria.) As a result, said the USDA’s Cross, neither method will necessitate reclassifying the meat or poultry as anything other than fresh.

No special labeling will be required for trisodium phosphate-treated chickens under the USDA’s recently announced regulations. Irradiated chicken, however, will have to prominently carry the international symbol for the process and the words “treated with irradiation” on product labels.

Small amounts of salmonella can be ingested in otherwise healthy individuals without incident. At elevated levels, however, the bacteria can cause nausea, vomiting, fever and abdominal pains. The infection can be especially severe, even fatal, in high risk groups such as infants, pregnant women, the elderly, cancer patients or those with AIDS.

Critics of USDA suggest that the timing of the recent approvals of irradiation and trisodium phosphates have political overtones.

“Government bureaucrats are now recognizing that there is an increasing certainty that the people making food safety decisions at the federal level will not be making those decisions come January,” said Leonard of the Community Nutrition Institute. “They are doing what the (meat) industry wants now.”

FSIS administrator Cross emphatically denied any political motivations for the recent decisions.

“That’s absolutely false,” Cross said. “I have been pushing for these three technologies as hard as I could since I got here because they are justified and needed,” he said. “Nobody above me (at USDA) said speed up or hold up the decisions. That is just not true.”