What does 2018 have in store for the meat and poultry industry? There is a plethora of issues facing our industry from trade to immigration to recovering from weather events. Below are a few regulatory and legislative issues that may affect the FSIS-regulated industry in 2018.
On May 1, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) began the next phase of its nationwide Raw Pork Products Exploratory Sampling Project (RPPESP). The purpose of the project is to determine the prevalence of pathogens in pork and use this data to “inform food safety policies.”
While the FSIS-regulated food industry has directed most of its limited food-safety resources over the last decade toward keeping harmful pathogens out of its food products, the existence of undeclared allergens has become a major issue.
Federal U.S. food safety surveillance data in recent years shows significant progress by the poultry and red meat industries in reducing foodborne pathogens.
