Food Safety Magazine, April/May 2011

(News continued from page 10)

FSIS Sets New Performance Standards for Salmonella and Campylobacter

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) yesterday announced implementation of revised and new performance standards for Salmonella and Campylobacter in young chickens and turkeys. The standards will become effective in July 2011.

Under the new standards, young chicken and turkey establishments will move to the highest scheduling priority due to the initiation of Campylobacter testing for these product classes. All sample sets scheduled for young chicken and turkey establishments will be analyzed for both Campylobacter and Salmonella, and follow-up sample sets responding to sample set failure for either organism will be analyzed for both organisms.

The new Salmonella standards will accept five positive samples in a 51-sample set for young chickens and four positive samples in a 56-sample set for turkeys.

Campylobacter performance standards and sample set criteria for tracking and reporting to establishments will be applied to results from the smaller of the two laboratory Campylobacter sample portions (1 mL), making the performance standards 10.4% for young chickens and 0.79% for turkeys.

Campylobacter sample set criteria for tracking and reporting 1-mL results are eight positive samples acceptable per 51- sample set for young chickens and three positive samples acceptable per 56-sam- ple set for turkeys.

FSIS predicts that 39,000 Salmonella illnesses and 26,000 Campylobacter illnesses will be avoided each year under the new standards, but has lowered that estimate to 20,000 and 5,000, respectively.

An advanced copy of the Federal Notice on the new standards is available at www.fsis.usda.gov/OPPDE/rdad/ FRPubs/2009-0029.pdf.

Safe Quality Food Institute Launches New Website

The Safe Quality Food Institute (SQFI) has launched a new website, www.sqfi.com, organizing the content according to the needs of the diverse community of users, including food suppliers, retail buyers, auditors and certification bodies and training centers and consultants.

Each group can find the information and services they require by clicking on tabs at the top of the home page. A comprehensive list of guidance documents, codes, applications and registration forms are now located under one tab also on the home page.

“We are excited to announce the launch of our new website, which has been
several months in the making,” said Bob Garfield, senior vice president, SQFI. “Our
goal was to provide easier access to the content and make it more user friendly for
the many different users who come to our website.”
Buyers can perform targeted searches for SQF-certified suppliers, specifying, for
example, the product category, company type (primary producer or manufacturer),
level of certification (1, 2 or 3), audit rating and country.

Suppliers interested in becoming SQF certified can find easy-to-follow steps under the Supplier tab, including how to choose a certification body and schedule an audit.