7/27/2019 What you need to know about salmonella.pdf

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What led to the salmonella outbreak? Its still unknown. Fos-ter Farms, the company that owns the processing plants , hasntsaid if it knows. Federal regulators suspect the bacteria spreadwhen whole chickens were cut into parts to be packaged and sold,

which is after the point regulators test for salmonella.

Chicken from those plants is still being sold. Why? It islegal to sell chicken in the U.S. that has salmonella in it. Food re-calls technically are voluntary, but the U.S. Department of Agricul-ture has not encouraged Foster Farms to pull chicken from thesethree California plants out of supermarkets. We have to be confi-dent that what we decide to pull out of the market is what we can

support in the evidence,said Daniel Engeljohn,assistant administrator withthe USDAs Food Safetyand Inspection Service.The company and thegovernment say youshould be fine if you prop-erly cook and handle themeat.

So why did so many people get so sick? The strains of sal-monella are especially strong. They are antibiotic-resistant, which

means that drugs that normally would be able to kill the bacteria orstop its growth dont work.

Why didnt the USDA shut down the plants when officialsknew about the problems? On Oct. 7, the agency threatened toshut down the plants by pulling its inspectors but did not actually doso. Thats because Foster Farms assured federal inspectors that itwas making changes to improve its processes. One change thecompany has pledged to make is introducing an antimicrobial treat-

ment on chicken parts.

Why didnt this problem get caught earlier by USDA in-spectors? The food inspection system is designed to flag plants

that have especially high amounts of the bacteria in their meat, buttesting is infrequent. The three Foster Farms plants in question hadsuch good records on salmonella that their whole chicken carcasseswere tested by federal inspectors about every two years. The re-sults did not foreshadow any problems. Even subsequent testingafter the outbreak started found rates of salmonella on chicken partsin the plants only slightly higher than the typical plant. While inspec-tors found some safety violations in the plants, they were not appre-ciably different from other plants. Right now, the evidence we haveis that the production process was not out of control, Engeljohnsaid. It can be improved, but it was not out of control.

Why are these bacteriaantibiotic-resistant? Somelivestock are fed antibiotics tomake them grow faster and toprevent and treat disease.The bacteria in livestock haveresponded, leading to an in-crease in the prevalence ofantibiotic-resistant bacteria.Thats bad news for humans

who get infected with the bacteria. Antibiotic resistance may contrib-ute to the bacterias virulence and make it harder to treat infection inhumans. We can see evidence of that toll in the current outbreak;40 percent of the reported victims have been hospitalized. That isabout twice the typical hospitalization rate in a salmonella outbreak.

What is the U.S. doing to control salmonella at chickenfarms? Not much. In the United States, federal inspectors do notmonitor chickens being raised for slaughter for human pathogenssuch as salmonella Heidelberg. In fact, the USDAs Food Safetyand Inspection Service has no jurisdiction over chickens at thatstage. It starts looking at the birds when they are brought to theplants to be killed and processed, like the Foster Farms facilities in

Central California.

If you eat chicken, howcan you protect yourselffrom salmonella? To kill thebacteria in raw chicken, itshould be cooked to at least165 degrees, according toFoodsafety.gov. It soundscounterintuitive, but do notwash your raw chicken. Thatsa common way that cross-contamination occurs in thehome kitchen. Anything it

touchesyour hands, your sink, your countertreat it like it is con-

taminated and clean it up afterwards, said Jean Weese, professorof poultry science at Auburn University.

Europe seems to be doing better with salmonella. Whatare nations there doing that the U.S. isnt? While the U.S.has made no progress in cutting the incidence of salmonella infec-tions in humans since 1996, the European Union cut its infectionsby almost half between 2004 and 2009. Some countries, such asSweden, have greatly reduced salmonella in chickens sold for food.But they have done so in part by aggressively managing the humanpathogen in flocks, killing infected birds by the tens of thousands.

Clip & Save: 9 things you need to know about salmonellaBy Katharine Mieszkowski |The Center for Investigative Reporting

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n outbreak of an especially strong form of salmonella has sickened hundreds of people in 20 states. But how it hap-pened largely has remained a mystery. Heres what we know about some of the more pressing questions surrounding

the outbreak. Have other questions? Email the reporter at kmieszkowski@cironline.org.

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