021124 USDA to Check Surfaces at Plants For Listeria

The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced an aggressive new directive to protect the nation's deli meat and hot dog supply against contamination by the deadly listeria bacteria.

Beginning Dec. 9, USDA inspectors will begin randomly testing surfaces within food plants for the Listeria monocytogenes bacteria, the listeria species considered most harmful to humans. Currently, only the meat itself is tested. If the bacteria is found in the plant environment, the entire meat lot would be considered adulterated, and the plant would be requested to do a voluntary recall, said Dan Engeljohn of USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS).

“We're going to routinely look in the environment in the plant, which we've never done before,” he said.

The new rules follow a major listeria outbreak in the Northeast earlier this year that killed seven and sickened 52 and resulted in the recall of 27.4 million pounds of meat, the largest meat recall in U.S. history.

Some plants voluntarily test their meat and plant sites now. The USDA's new directive will only apply to plants that don't do their own environmental testing or don't have a plan for responding to a listeria infection. It would also apply to plants that do environmental testing but don't make the results available to the USDA.

“We're going to go after those plants that have demonstrated the greatest reluctance to generate scientific testing programs,” Engeljohn said.

Elsa Murano, the USDA's undersecretary for food safety, outlined the directives at a listeria summit Monday in Washington, D.C.

Tim Willard of the National Food Processors Association said the industry “absolutely” supports testing for listeria. But environmental listeria testing does not determine that a plant is producing a dangerous product, he said. “It's a warning bell. It's not a finding of a dangerous end-product.”

Eating food contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes can cause listeriosis, an uncommon but potentially fatal disease. Listeriosis can cause flu-like symptoms such as high fever, severe headache and nausea. It can also cause miscarriages and sometimes fatal infections in infants, seniors and those with compromised immune systems.

FSIS is in the process of writing rules to further safeguard the ready-to-eat food supply. Those are due to be announced in coming months.

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