No, the title of this column does not contain a typo. Under the right circumstances, most of which are unpredictable, Salmonella can give you a real body slam. The pathogen is prevalent, it’s elusive, it’s difficult to control and it continues to take center stage in U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) continuing war against pathogens.
On Sept. 18, FSIS released its Roadmap to Reducing Salmonella. The roadmap outlines FSIS’s strategy to enforce performance standards for the reduction of Salmonella which, arguably, will reduce the number of illnesses relating to the pathogen. The agency’s announcement comes on the heels of new performance standards recently proposed for ground beef and manufacturing trimmings.