The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) is recommending that the Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) take action to reduce pathogen contamination on chicken and turkey products, make sure that agency food-safety standards are being met, and better assess whether on-farm practices are effective in reducing pathogens in live poultry. In a 67-page report publicly released Monday entitled, “USDA Needs to Strengthen Its Approach to Protecting Human Health from Pathogens in Poultry Products,” GAO suggests that USDA take four specific actions: 1. To help ensure that FSIS efforts protect human health by reducing Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination in FSIS-regulated poultry products, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Administrator of FSIS to expeditiously develop Salmonella performance measures with associated targets for young turkey carcasses to monitor whether activities to bring plants into compliance with the standards are meeting the agency’s goals. 2. To help ensure that the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) efforts protect human health by reducing Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination in FSIS-regulated poultry products, once FSIS revises its Salmonella standards for ground chicken and ground turkey, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Administrator of FSIS to expeditiously develop Salmonella performance measures with associated targets for these products to monitor whether activities to bring plants into compliance with the standards are meeting the agency’s goals. 3. To help ensure that FSIS efforts protect human health by reducing Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination in FSIS-regulated poultry products, once FSIS establishes plant compliance categories for Campylobacter in young chicken and turkey carcasses, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Administrator of FSIS to expeditiously develop Campylobacter performance measures with associated targets for these products to monitor whether activities to bring plants into compliance with the standards are meeting the agency’s goals. 4. To help ensure that FSIS efforts protect human health by reducing Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination in FSIS-regulated poultry products, in future revisions of the compliance guidelines on controlling Salmonella and Campylobacter, the Secretary of Agriculture should direct the Administrator of FSIS to ensure the inclusion of information on the effectiveness of each recommended farm practice to reduce these pathogens in live poultry. GAO, an independent legislative-branch agency, noted that FSIS faces several challenges in reducing Salmonella and Campylobacter contamination in poultry products: “These include limited control outside of slaughter plants, pathogens not designated as hazards, limited enforcement authority, absence of mandatory recall authority, outdated or nonexistent standards, insufficient prevalence estimates, the complex nature of Salmonella, and limited Campylobacter research and testing.” These perceived FSIS challenges were based on GAO’s own analyses and the views of 11 stakeholder groups, academic researchers, and FSIS officials, the report stated, adding, “… the stakeholder groups representing consumers and those representing industry generally had differing views.” On Monday, a spokesperson for FSIS indicated that the agency was in accord with the report’s overall findings. “FSIS appreciates the GAO’s acknowledgment that FSIS is putting in place an ‘increasingly science-based, data-driven and risk-based approach’ to protecting public health. We agree with the report’s recommendations and will continue implementing them,” the spokesperson stated. USDA officials had previously reviewed a draft copy of GAO’s report, and a five-page response dated Sept. 15 from Brian Ronholm, the agency’s Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, is included in the appendices. Among other comments, Ronholm acknowledged that while FSIS “has not established formal performance measures for all poultry product and pathogen combinations … ,” developing such measures is a “formal, rigorous process” that can take several years to accomplish. He further stated that, despite not having formal performance measures in place, FSIS does set goals and track progress and, as an example, makes public the percentage of Campylobacter positives in turkey establishments along with other information so that the agency and regulated industry may adjust food-safety activities in response to trends. Ronholm also clarified that some data on the incidence of Salmonella illnesses in humans which GAO used in its report included all such data CDC tracks with its FoodNet program and not just those illnesses related to FSIS-regulated products (which include meat, poultry and eggs). “Salmonella attribution to FSIS-regulated products has actually decreased over the past 5 years,” he noted. Finally, Ronholm addressed the four specific GAO recommendations in detail and wrote that FSIS concurs with each one. The two U.S. senators who requested the GAO report this past March responded to its findings on Monday. Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) released a joint statement, along with their Senate colleague, Richard Durbin (D-IL), noting that they had written to Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to urge that stronger Salmonella and Campylobacter standards be set for poultry. In their letter, the senators reminded Vilsack that he had committed to moving forward with such pathogen standards by the end of the federal fiscal year, which was Sept. 30, but that the standards had not yet been proposed. “Routine testing done in 2013 by the Department found that over 40 percent of ground chicken tested positive for Salmonella. A national study completed by the Department in 2012 found that 26 percent of poultry parts tested positive for Salmonella and 21 percent tested positive for Campylobacter. As of today, there are no standards for poultry parts and the standards for ground poultry have not been updated since 1996,” they wrote.