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Strategic Objective
Protect Public Health by Ensuring Food is Safe
Strategic Objective
Overview
USDA is committed to ensuring Americans have access to safe food through a farm-to-table approach to reducing and preventing foodborne illness. The Department invests in its workforce and data infrastructure to prevent harm to consumers by reducing the incidence of food contamination and quickly identifying and working to prevent or limit outbreaks. Effective response to food safety issues and enforcement depend upon timely, quality data and analysis.
USDA conducts in-commerce surveillance activities to protect public health by ensuring that meat, poultry, and processed egg products are safe, secure, wholesome, correctly labeled and packaged. In fiscal year 2012, USDA ensured public health requirements were met in establishments that slaughter or process 147 million head of livestock and 8.9 billion poultry carcasses. In the same year, USDA estimated that there were 479,621 Salmonella, Listeria monocytgenes (Lm), and Escherichia coli (E. coli) O157:H7 foodborne illnesses attributed to Department-regulated products.
USDA also measures industry adoption of functional food defense plans. Food defense plans are written procedures that official meat and poultry slaughter and processing establishments, egg product plants, and official import inspection establishments should follow to protect the food supply from intentional contamination of food products with chemicals, biological agents, or other harmful substances. These plans help the industry protect public health and reduce negative economic impacts on the food infrastructure.
Finally, as imported products and on-farm practices can dramatically impact food safety, USDA participates in and leads government-wide Codex Alimentarius activities to ensure that science-based international public health standards are in place, promotes use of Codex standards by other governments and international producers, conducts re-inspection of imported products and audits foreign countries to ensure the safety of imported products and provides guidance to promote good agricultural practices on the farm. The Codex Committee on Food Hygiene (chaired by the U.S.) also adopted Guidelines for the Control of Campylobacter and Salmonella in chicken meat in 2011. The guidelines are consistent with USDA hygienic performance standards and will help ensure the safety of imported products.
Read Less...Progress Update
In FY 2015, USDA met its goal for percent of broiler plants passing the carcass Salmonella Verification Testing Standards, but did not meet the goals for the Total Illnesses from all USDA products and the percent of establishments with a functional Food Defense Plan.
While USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) has not met all the targets, FSIS has made substantial progress on all of initiatives outlined in its Salmonella Action Plan to reduce illnesses from Salmonella in regulated products. FSIS will also continue to focus on Salmonella as it develops its new strategic plan for FY 2017-2021.
