Dive Brief:
- Wal-Mart's four-step chicken safety plan demonstrates how suppliers can improve their poultry policies to reduce the instance of salmonella.
- The retailer started working with suppliers on more stringent food safety requirements in December 2014, and as of June, has reduced instances of positive salmonella tests from 17% of its chicken parts to 2%.
- Wal-Mart instituted these changes for its own chicken supplies, but those suppliers produce 80% of all chickens sold in the U.S. The impact stretches across the entire industry and to consumers beyond Wal-Mart shoppers.
Dive Insight:
With Wal-Mart's poultry safety policies, the USDA's new standards and new Food and Drug Administration requirements, this year could be a tipping point in the industry's battle to reduce salmonella contaminations and outbreaks, Robert Tauxe, director of the CDC's Division of Foodborne, Waterborne and Environmental Diseases, said during a presentation at the annual conference of the International Association for Food Protection.
Wal-Mart's four-part plan includes primary breeder stock interventions that lower broiler flocks' risk of vertical salmonella transmission; bio-control measures and best practices for disease prevention, such as vaccinations of broiler/breeder flocks; and interventional practices that aim to make the number of salmonella bacteria contaminating whole chickens 10,000 times smaller, and 10 times smaller for chicken parts.
Poultry suppliers have also adjusted to meet new safety requirements the USDA set this past February. The federal poultry safety standards aim to reduce salmonella and campylobacter in ground chicken and turkey products and in raw chicken breasts, legs and wings. Chicken accounts for about 19% of foodborne illness deaths, according to the CDC, so any reduction from chicken parts and products could significantly impact these statistics.
This is on top of all of the industrywide changes manufacturers are making to prepare for the FDA's new requirements under the Food Safety Modernization Act. The first compliance deadline for large manufacturers is just a month away, but the FDA is still training inspectors, who may not begin surveying facilities until January.