The Meat Institute announces it has joined the Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness, expanding its access to food safety best practices and other efforts to prevent foodborne illness on behalf of meat and poultry companies.

The Alliance to Stop Foodborne Illness is a nonprofit program of Stop Foodborne Illness. It brings together consumer advocates, companies and like-minded organizations committed to the goal of preventing foodborne disease. The alliance comprises more than 20 members from around the globe working together to share best practices and advance food safety culture.

“Our members heard from Christopher George, a Stop Foodborne Illness constituent, at our recent Food Safety Conference in Kansas City,” said Meat Institute President and CEO Julie Anna Potts. “His personal testimony about his son nearly dying from contracting E. coli O157:H7 was a powerful reminder of the life-or-death consequences of all we do to protect against foodborne illness.”

Stop Foodborne Illness works to amplify compelling personal stories, like George’s, about the impact of foodborne illness to motivate people at all levels to do the right thing every day to make food safe. The Meat Institute’s membership in the alliance will help the Meat Institute collaborate and share best practices, which then helps Meat Institute members with continuous improvement and further establishing a culture of food safety at their companies. An example of the work conducted by the alliance is its Food Safety Culture Toolkit, a free resource library of video testimonials from impacted consumers, interactive games, and customizable communication and assessment tools.

This is the latest in a series of tangible initiatives led by the Meat Institute to re-emphasize food safety as a top priority for its members. Earlier this year, a task force was created to build a set of tools and templates for top company executives to use in governing and promoting a food safety culture.

The Meat Institute will offer programming and training on these tools for senior executives at the Protein PACT Solutions Summit in October 2025. Summit registration is available online.

The Meat Institute is also working on new industry guidance on Listeria control called the “Foundations of Listeria Control,” to be published in September 2025.

Continuing the conversation from the Food Safety Conference, the Meat Institute is offering a Food Safety Exchange Series designed to provide ongoing education and insight on the critical issues shaping food safety.

Additionally, the Meat Institute offers the “Advanced Listeria monocytogenes Intervention & Control Workshop” twice a year, with the next held Oct. 22-23, 2025, in Kansas City, Mo.

Source: Meat Institute