USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) this week issued a public notice updating Notice 06-12 to advise inspection program personnel on the range of products tested for Salmonella. The notice declares that, even though most raw meat and poultry products are subject to Salmonella testing, there is a narrow set of circumstances in which sampling is not warranted.
According to the notice, when an establishment processes all its products into ready-to-eat product or moves all its raw products for further processing into ready-to-eat product at another federally inspected establishment, the raw products at that establishment are excluded from the not-ready-to-eat Salmonella verification testing program schedule.
A related FSIS notice was issued regarding information letters on Salmonella data for establishments producing ground chicken and ground turkey. FSIS has developed Historical Salmonella Serotype Information (HSSI) letters that provide serotype test results for Salmonella positive ground chicken and ground turkey samples collected by FSIS between January 1, 2005 and January 1, 2012. The HSSI letters will provide for each establishment an electronic spreadsheet file containing the raw data used as the source of the information in the HSSI letters. FSIS is providing the information so that establishments have it available for their use when they analyze their food safety programs and to help improve establishment decision-making.
This notice is available here.
