Dive Brief:
- Two Congresswomen, Rosa DeLauro and Louise Slaughter, on Monday called on the US Department of Agriculture to shut down Foster Farms' poultry processing facilities.
- They state that the facilities should be closed until an outbreak currently affecting over 600 people has been stopped.
- Foster Farms issued a recall July 3 of potentially contaminated chicken products, following a request from the US Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS).
Dive Insight:
The FSIS updated the case count of people sickened by Salmonella tied to Foster Farm chicken to 621 since March 2013 on July 4, a move that has spurred criticism from DeLauro and Slaughter.
"Burying news late at night on a holiday weekend may be a time-honored tradition by Washington spin doctors, but it is a shameful way to protect public health," the two Congresswomen said in their statement. FSIS says that it has no authority to shut down the plants, and that they updated the case count on a holiday in an effort to keep the public informed as soon as the information was made available.
